“You shouldn’t have too much trouble,” said Marcus in a voice eerily like his brother’s. “Just be firm, and they’ll back down.”
“And if they don’t?” said an anonymous voice from among the Guards.
“Then you do what you have to,” said David. “They’re troublemakers. Scum. We want them off our property. Hurt them. Kill them, if necessary. But get that rabble out of our docks.”
“If we kill them all,” said Hawk in a remarkably restrained voice, “you won’t have a workforce anymore.”
“We have the zombies,” said Marcus. “Now that we have the means to control such a number, they will be our workforce. The living are now redundant. The dead should prove much more reliable. They don’t need paying, or cosseting, and you don’t get any back talk from them.”
“Right,” said David. “Should have done this years ago.”
“And what about the people who worked for you all these years?” asked Hawk, still dangerously calm. “What right do you have to take away their livelihoods, destroy their lives, throw their families out onto the streets? Aren’t there enough beggars in the Hook already?”
“Life, and its riches, belong to the strong,” said Marcus DeWitt, entirely unmoved. “To those who have the strength to take what they want, and hold it.”
“And you’re the strongest ones here?” asked Hawk.
“Of course,” said David.
Hawk smiled nastily. “Want to come down here and arm wrestle?”
Several Guards laughed, and then quickly turned their laughter into coughs as it became clear the DeWitts had no sense of humor. Those Guards nearest Hawk and Fisher began to edge carefully away from them, not wishing to be associated with such dangerous people. The DeWitts moved forward to the edge of their balcony, to get a better look at Hawk.
“You are hired help,” David said flatly. “You’ll do as you’re told. Is that clear?”
Hawk’s hand dropped to the axe at his side. He was smiling, and a wild light burned in his eye. Fisher grabbed his arm and held it firmly in place. “Hawk, no! Not here. Not in front of witnesses.”
Hawk’s arm muscles bulged dangerously under her hand, and then slowly relaxed again. Fisher let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. The DeWitts glared down at Hawk until it was clear he had nothing more to say, and then they turned their backs on him and left the balcony. Members of their private guard moved slowly among the city Guard, assigning them positions on the harborside and giving them more specific orders where necessary. Hawk was surprised to see a familiar face approaching him. Mistique was a charming sorceress of no uncommon ability, and had impressed him greatly the last time they’d worked together. A tall, slender, constantly fluttering figure in her mid-thirties, Mistique was dressed in traditional sorceress’ black, but the outfit was carefully cut in the very latest fashion to show plenty of bare flesh. She had a long, horsey face, and a friendly, toothy grin that made her look easily ten years younger. It also made her look like she was about to take a bite out of you, but then, you couldn’t have everything. She had a thick mane of jet black curly hair that fell well past her shoulders, which she was constantly having to sweep back out of her eyes. She had a husky upper-class accent, a disturbingly direct gaze, and wore dozens of bangles and bracelets that clattered loudly with her every movement.
“Darlings!” she said loudly, advancing on Hawk and Fisher with determined cheeriness. “How absolutely super to see you both again!”
“Hello, Mistique,” said Fisher, glad of anything that might distract Hawk. “What the hell are you doing here? You’re not in charge of all those bloody zombies, are you?”
“Certainly not,” said Mistique, pulling a face. “Nasty things. Not my kind of territory at all. No, the city Council appointed me as official bodyguard to the DeWitts, for the duration of their troubles. Just in case the dockers have clubbed together to buy some magical threat. If it was anyone but the DeWitts, I’d have told the Council to go take a long walk off a short pier, but one doesn’t turn down the DeWitts. So here I am, darlings, a sorceress of my magnitude reduced to a mere bodyguard. The shame of it. Far too much like real work for my taste. But, needs must when the devil vomits in your shoes. And the job does pay very well. Both Mummy and Daddy are getting on a bit now, and need a lot of looking after, which means I’ve been raiding the family coffers just a little more than I feel comfortable with, so …”
“So we do what the DeWitts tell us, and tug our forelocks respectfully, if we know what’s good for us,” said Hawk.
“Well, yes, darling. That’s life. In Haven, anyway. Though it has to be said that Marcus and David don’t have a single social grace between them. I mean, honestly, they’ve been ordering me about like a bloody servant. I’d widdle in their wine, but with the vintages they prefer, they’d probably never notice.”
“Maybe you can tell us why the DeWitts have such a hold over the Council just now,” said Fisher. “They don’t normally have this much influence.”
“Ah, yes. It seems there’s a great deal of perishable goods currently waiting to be unloaded from the boats in the harbor. Tons and tons of it. And an awful lot of it could go off, really soon, if it isn’t unloaded in a hurry. The DeWitts are currently paying for widespread preservation spells, but if they have to keep that up much longer, the cost will eat up all their profits. So dear David and Marcus are caught between a rock and a descending boot. If they let up on the spells, they’ll be left with nothing but tons of rotting food. And if they don’t supply that food, in good condition, they stand to lose not only oodles and oodles of money, but also a whole bunch of very important contracts throughout the city. So they really can’t afford to allow anything to interfere with unloading the ships.”
“And of course the dockers know all about this,” said Hawk.
“Oh, of course, darling. Anyway, since the Council doesn’t want to face a whole city full of hungry people, with the prospect of civil unrest and even riots, for now what the DeWitts want, the DeWitts get. Bend over and smile, darlings. It’ll all be over before you know it.”
“How are the DeWitts controlling so many zombies at once?” asked Fisher, on the grounds that changing the subject had to be a good idea.
“They’ve come into possession of some remarkable magical artifact,” said Mistique, tossing her long hair thoughtfully. “Paid a hell of a lot for it, too. Apparently it makes controlling any number of zombies a piece of cake. I don’t know what it is. They won’t let me see it. They’re also being very cagey about who they got it from. Don’t blame them. Nothing good ever came from dealing with necromancers.”
“Could they really get away with replacing the workforce with zombies?” asked Hawk.
“I don’t see why not,” said Fisher. “Zombies wear out the longer and harder you work them, but there’s never any shortage of corpses in Haven to replace them. In fact, the Council would probably approve. All the main cemeteries have been full for years, and the incinerators are working twenty-four-hour shifts.”
“But what about the dockworkers and their families?” asked Hawk. “Does no one care what happens to them?”
“This is Haven, darling,” said Mistique, not unkindly.
“And the DeWitts are running a business, not a charity,” said a cold voice bearing down on them. The three of them looked around to see the commander of the DeWitts’ private guards. He crashed to a halt before them, and took it in turns to favor each of them with his glare. Big, broad, and muscular, he would have looked really impressive and menacing if he hadn’t been wearing the DeWitt official private guard uniform. Banana yellow with bloodred piping, topped with a rich purple cloak. He looked very much like a bruise on legs. Hawk and Fisher had to bite their lips.
“Hello, Commander Foy,” said Mistique. “Love the outfit.”
“Trust me,” said Fisher. “You are entirely alone in that.”
“I think my retinas are burning out,” said Hawk.
“Hu
sh,” said Fisher. “What do you want with us, Foy?”
“Commander Foy! I run things here, and don’t you forget it!” He glared at Hawk and Fisher, who still couldn’t meet his eyes. The commander sniffed loudly. “The DeWitts understand that this is not the kind of work the city Guard are used to undertaking. So, to … sweeten the medicine, the DeWitts have most kindly authorized me to assure all of you that there will be a substantial bonus, to be paid at the end of the day. A very substantial bonus.”
“Bribe money,” said Fisher. “Why am I not surprised?”
“We’re not taking it,” said Hawk.
“Hold everything,” said Fisher immediately. “We haven’t heard how much it is yet.”
“We don’t need their blood money,” said Hawk.
“Hey, we’re going to be doing the work anyway, and you can bet no one else will turn it down.”
“We’re not taking it!” Hawk yelled.
Fisher looked at Foy. “We’re not taking it. But I’ll bet we’re the only ones.”
“No bet,” said yet another voice, close at hand. This turned out to be Constable Murdoch. He and his younger brother patrolled the docks. Hawk and Fisher knew them vaguely, from cooperating on a few cases together. The older brother was currently standing face-to-face with Commander Foy, glaring right into the man’s eyes, while his younger brother stood impassively at his side, as always. “I’m not taking any part in this, and neither is my brother,” said Murdoch. “We’re local. Grew up in the Devil’s Hook. Our dad worked the docks till the strain of it killed him. Some of those strikers are our friends and neighbors and family. We’ll not raise a hand against them.” He glared at Commander Foy. “We’re not the only ones, either. Your bosses don’t have enough money to make us fight our own kind. Not over something like this.”
“It may not come to fighting,” said Hawk. “If we’re a strong enough presence …”
“They’ll fight,” said Murdoch. “You know they’ll fight. They’ve nothing else left.”
“We’re the law,” Hawk said slowly. “We’re not supposed to choose which laws we’ll uphold, and which we won’t.”
Murdoch snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you, Captain. Everyone knows your reputation. You bend and break the law every day.”
“In pursuit of justice.”
“Where’s the justice here?” said Murdoch. He turned to his brother. “Come on. We’re leaving.”
“And if they fire you?” said Fisher.
Murdoch shrugged calmly. “Then we’ll join the striking dockers. And the next time there’s trouble here, and you can bet there’ll be a next time, the faces you see over raised weapons might just be ours. What will you do then, Captains?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. The Murdoch brothers made their way out of the courtyard, and no one tried to stop them. But no one else followed them. Commander Foy started to say something cutting, and then the words died in his mouth as Hawk gave him a hard look. Foy decided he had urgent business elsewhere, and went off to look for it, trying not to hurry too obviously. Fisher sniffed, and took her hand away from her sword. She looked at Hawk.
“Murdoch had a point. Where is the justice in what we’re doing here?”
“I don’t know,” said Hawk, and suddenly he sounded very tired. “Part of me wants to walk right out of here with the Murdochs, but … the law here’s very clear. Mob violence has no place in business disputes. If we stay … maybe we can help keep the violence from getting out of hand. Sometimes you have to settle for the lesser of two evils. But there’s nothing says we have to like it.”
The general growl of conversation among the Guards died away as the DeWitts came back out onto their balcony, and looked down like generals surveying their troops. As Foy had intimated, the DeWitts began by committing themselves to a massive bonus, to be paid once the Guards’ work was done. Most of the Guards nodded acceptance happily enough. A few even cheered.
“The strikers have refused our lawful orders to leave the docks,” said Marcus DeWitt. “You will make them leave, by whatever means necessary.”
“Be careful once you get onto the harborside,” said David. “Some of the structures aren’t very safe.”
There was a brief murmur of dark amusement among the Guards. The DeWitts seemed entirely unaware of the irony in what had just been said.
“Do your duty, Guardsmen,” said Marcus flatly. “Your city has need of you.”
There were a few more cheers, but the majority of the Guards just turned and left the cobbled yard, heading to the docks to do their job.
The first light of true morning spread slowly across the docks as the Guards marched down the harborside to face the striking dockers. Most of the red was gone from the skies, and a thin mist had sprung up, a pearl gray cloud that swallowed up the ships in the harbor, and wrapped itself around the two factions as though cutting them off from the rest of the world. As though nothing mattered but what the dockers and the Guard would do next. They were in their own little world now, with no escape from the violent clash that was growing more real and more inevitable with every moment.
The harborside shook under the massed thunder of booted feet as the Guards bore down on the gathered strikers. The dockers fell silent, but made no move to fall back or disperse. They stood close together, bodies tense with anticipation, their faces full of silent hate and determination. The Guards crashed to a halt facing the strikers, and for a long, long moment both sides just stood and looked at each other. Both sides had weapons in their hands.
In the midst of his fellow Guards, Hawk hefted his axe uneasily. Even now a few calm words from either side might have stopped this. A little give and take from both sides, a few gestures of goodwill, and they could all have turned aside from the terrible thing waiting to happen. But no one was interested in compromise. Hawk looked away, his gaze moving almost desperately across the ships’ masts rising above the mists like naked trees, and a sudden surge of wanderlust hit him, almost like pain. He felt an almost physical need to board one of those ships and just sail away. Not just from this particularly unpleasant duty, but from Haven, and all its corrupting evils. To start a new life somewhere else, to be someone else, someone cleaner. … Or perhaps just keep traveling. Hawk shook his head angrily. He’d never run away from a hard decision before, and he wasn’t about to start now.
He looked at the striking dockers, and they looked back, grim and cold, knowing they were damned, whatever happened. The tension on the docks was so real and focused now, it almost had a cutting edge of its own. The violence was very close, a scent of sweat and adrenaline, a taste of blood in the mouth. Of men preparing to fight, to bleed and maybe die, because they had turned away from every other option. Because it was time.
Hawk looked away again, as though by his refusal to take part, he could prevent the gathering anticipation. Like a child who thinks that if he can’t see it, it isn’t happening. He studied the zombies, still moving slowly but purposefully back and forth, lifting and carrying and even operating the simple cranes with silent, unwavering precision. Once set in motion, they would work day and night, with no need to stop for rest or food or sleep. They felt no pain or weariness, and nothing short of major damage or actual falling apart would stop or even slow them down. Whoever they might have been in life no longer mattered. They were just machines now, unfeeling limbs and muscles moving to another’s will.
They still had their drawbacks. They would perform a task unceasingly, but if conditions changed, the dead were incapable of adapting to that change. They couldn’t cope with even the simplest forms of the unexpected. They had physical problems, too. They were dead, after all, and while zombification slowed the processes of corruption, it couldn’t stop them completely. As a result, all the zombies were in varying stages of decay. Some had no eyes and could not see, and were limited to only the simplest tasks. Sometimes an unexpected weight or strain would tear a rotted arm or hand completely away. The zombie would mindlessly conti
nue in its work, incapable of realizing it no longer had enough limbs to carry the job out. Some bodies were so far gone, they were literally strapped together with cords and leather thongs to keep them from falling apart.
A few still bore recent autopsy scars, or even the wounds that had killed them. And a few had obviously been stitched together from ill-assorted spare parts. The zombie spell could get a lot of work out of a dead body. Hawk looked hard, but didn’t recognize any of the dead faces. He wasn’t sure what he would or could have done if he had.
Later, no one was sure how it had started. Maybe somebody said or did something, or someone else thought they did. It didn’t matter. Suddenly both sides surged forward and slammed together in the middle of the harborside, and everyone was screaming and fighting in one great milling mass, desperate to hurt and punish the enemy that made this fight necessary. Steel hooks and crowbars faced off against swords and axes, blood splashed on the ground among the stamping feet, and no one had any interest in quarter or mercy. Because if one side or the other did back down, everyone knew that side would never be taken seriously again. So they fought with savage fury, spitting their hatred into one another’s faces, and within moments, the first dead went crashing to the bloody ground.
Hawk and Fisher fought with axe and sword and practiced skill. They had to. The dockers would have killed them if they’d hesitated. Hawk parried desperate blows and struck back with vicious precision, and howling men and women fell before him. There was no time to tell whether he’d killed them. The Guards and strikers surged back and forth, the two sides being forced apart into small clashes of fighting men and women as the situation grew increasingly confused. There was no room or time for tactics or planning, just the vicious thrust and parry from every side, and the howling voices of the victorious and the wounded. The strikers outnumbered the Guard, but the Guards were better trained and armed. Blood flew in the air, spattering those around. The wounded on the ground tried to drag themselves away between the stamping feet. And still both sides pressed forward, struggling in the milling chaos to reach their hated enemy.
Beyond the Blue Moon (Forest Kingdom Novels) Page 5