by Ben Galley
It was then that Temsa held up his cane. His small army came to a halt, bunching up behind Jexebel and Danib.
‘Useless bunch of pricks. What have Yaridin and Liria got for us, Tor?’ Jexebel hissed, and I smiled as she swaggered past me.
Temsa pulled a strip of papyrus from his pocket and thrust it at her, avoiding her eyes. Jexebel snatched it away and my smile grew. I heard another roar from behind the walls. I wondered who was wilder, those encaged inside the zoo or those poised outside it.
Jexebel shrugged, her great pauldrons clanking. ‘Fuck all apart from a few back entrances, it seems.’
Temsa jabbed his finger at the papyrus. ‘Guard numbers. Patrol schedules. A smaller gate. Not the best, I’ll admit, but we’ll have even less information when we tackle Horix, so you’d better get used to it, m’dear,’ Temsa snapped. There was no affection in that epithet now. I was dead, and even I felt its coldness.
‘And when will the next patrol be?’ I interjected.
Temsa ran me through with a look. ‘Imminently.’
I stuck to Temsa’s side as we followed the men to a skinny gate. Light from braziers pooled on the cobbles and leaked out into the street.
‘All-out assault, then, Temsa?’ I whispered.
Temsa cackled, and I heard the feverishness in his tone. ‘Finel believes in using walls and his strange collection of creatures to deter the curious. And like I said, Caltro, this is practically the Sprawls. If nobody gives a shit in the Core, who do you think would give a shit here?’
A distant ringing of a bell spurred a few scuffles of boots, a cough, and murmured words from the other side of the gate. I heard the rustle of chain and plate mail. I instinctively stiffened, my glow fading.
‘Triggermen,’ hissed Jexebel, and four hooded soldiers with quivers at their sides came forward obediently, pausing at the edge of the shadows. They heaved up their heavy triggerbows: stocky constructions the length of a man’s leg, with two bows crossed in the shape of an X. A bolt the thickness of my thumb and fletched with black feathers rested at their intersection.
There came a series of thuds as the gate’s bolts were drawn back. Dark shapes moved across the orange light. At Jexebel’s nod, two of Temsa’s soldiers sprinted into the light and blasted bolts into the breastplates of a pair of guards emerging from the gate. The remaining two followed suit, catching another guard with a cry as he ran up to investigate the noises. As he died, gurgling blood, he managed to pull the gate closed, spring-bolts locking it firmly.
Jexebel slammed her fists on the bars of the gate. Everybody present held their breath. I listened hard. No shouts came. No alarms. The soldiers around us murmured their relief.
Temsa signalled to his monstrous shade. ‘Danib.’ It barely sounded like a command.
After the tor produced a copper knife and held it to my already scarred neck, the ghost released me and strode towards the gate with the heavy clanking of steel plate. The soldiers began to chant softly, swarming in Danib’s wake. The monstrous ghost drew both his blades with a harmonic ring. One was a huge longsword that would have taken two men to lift. The other was Pointy. He held both weapons low at his sides, stretched out like scythes. I heard Pointy’s cry, plaintive and distant in my head.
‘I think I preferred Temsa!’
As Danib neared the stout bars, he pivoted on his heel, bringing both swords together at the crossguards as he spun. His blue glow flared brightly between the gaps in his dun armour, like a star wrapped in steel.
The blades met the gate with a horrendous clang. Sparks fountained, scattering over Danib’s horned helmet and shoulders. As he followed the momentum into another blow, I saw the great notch on the broadsword. There wasn’t a mark on the soulblade.
There was another rending crash, and a thick section of gate fell outwards. Danib threw it aside, crushing one of his own men in the process, and strode into Finel’s zoo.
‘Effective,’ Temsa muttered, prodding me onwards with the knife.
‘What? Your monster of a ghost, or my sword?’
‘Both.’ He paused to sneer. ‘Though judging by my sword, you’re becoming rather redundant, Caltro.’
‘I’d like to see it face a vault door that’s three feet thick,’ I retorted with a scoff. In truth, I really did want to see what Pointy could do. The soulblade was keener than a winter wind across the Krass steppes. He certainly would have made lockpicking far easier.
With soldiers now spiralling around us, their swords facing outwards like the teeth of a vicious cog, we followed a short path into what appeared to be a maze of cages. Great and small, they filled the trench between the outer wall and the next, which was taller and spikier than the first.
The silence was soon shattered. It seemed we had found the feathered creature section. Every cage was filled with squawking, flapping things. That was a fine alarm if I had ever heard one. Feathers and down drifted through the fine bars like a strange and unexpected snow. Lanterns hung from poles every ten paces, and they lit the wonder around us. Like the soldiers around me, I stared at each and every cage with wonder, all thoughts of murder and burglary momentarily forgotten.
In one cage, I saw two birds both taller than a man. They had hooked beaks and long, scaly necks like snakes. They raked their sickle claws against their cage doors while screeching at the top of their lungs. I saw a sign at the foot of their cage. It said, “Sicklestritch”.
In another enclosure, two brightly coloured yet tiny gazelles hid in a corner. They were covered in iridescent feathers that switched between a spectrum of colours. Red, blue, gold, white, back to red… I couldn’t keep up.
The next cage held a pink featherless thing with two heads. It was hanging upside down from the iron bars like a skinned pig waiting to be butchered. Each head bickered feverishly with the other, brandishing copper beaks not too dissimilar to lances. At the creature’s wingtips, hooked claws flashed as it took a break from its internal arguing to spit at us.
‘Shut these beasts up!’ Temsa barked.
His triggermen went to work with ardour, sliding bolts into their bows and starting with the loudest bird. I flinched with every snap of their strings, and then again with each matching thud as the bolt met a different feathered beast. The night grew a little quieter with each one, and my grimace a little grimmer. Though I might not have been fond of my fellow man, I knew the value of beasts. Animals had purer, more ancient souls than we humans did, and for most of my life, I had privately held onto the notion that if animals ever learned to speak, they would melt our minds to shit with all the wisdom we’ve forgotten. All apart from sheep. They’re dumb fucks.
‘This is useless, Temsa,’ I blurted, watching a doleful ball of feathers get a bolt to the face and disappear in a puff of down. ‘You can’t shut them all up. Just move on!’
His blade was at my throat before I’d finished my sentence. ‘Presuming to give me orders, half-life?’
I met his gaze. ‘Recommendations. Seeing as you won’t take them from anyone else, I thought I’d give it a go.’
My words nettled him in more ways than one, but chiefly because he knew how right I was. Now that we stood on a path following the curve of the walls, he could see how the cages stretched into the darkness, north and south. The ruckus was spreading from cage to cage. Perhaps it was the death-squawks of their feathered kin, or the smell of blood on the air. It didn’t sour my nostrils, but I imagined it was there.
‘Ani! Up the pace. Onto the next gate!’ Temsa waved his scrap of papyrus at her as she and the soldiers jogged forwards. A dozen stayed with us, sticking to Temsa’s hobbling, clanging pace.
The clamour of the cages masked the screams at first. We soon realised the difference as we rounded a huge enclosure holding what looked to be a thousand finches. They tore about their cage in a great blurring swarm, like a furious, cheeping tornado.
We found chaos waiting for us at the next gate. Serek Finel’s guards were worth their coin. They had barricaded the iro
n bars with benches and fence-posts. Danib was there alongside Jexebel, hacking at anybody who dared to come near enough to skewer or hack. Temsa’s soldiers clamoured either side of them. Every other moment, I heard the thunk of triggerbows over the melee.
Temsa put two fingers between his teeth and a piercing shriek came forth. Even to my numbed senses, it was loud. I wiggled my fingers in my ear, and half my skull in the process.
The two hulking figures extricated themselves from the clash of steel and came loping over. Temsa had his hands on his hips.
‘The next fucking gate! Didn’t you look at the map, Ani?’ He didn’t wait for her answer, and instead pointed back through the cages. ‘You two alone. Go!’
The tor waited patiently while his soldiers feigned a siege. Meanwhile, I stared at an owl that had one singular eye. It sat in a cage nearby, totally aloof from the fighting. The eye was far too big for its body, taking up half its face. The big orb fixed on me as if I was a mouse. It was a pool of oil with golden edges. The metallic flecks began to revolve around their black pit, swirling like molten gold escaping down a plughole. I felt myself falling into its centre, feeling just as liquid, glimpsing stars in the darkness. A whole night sky beckoned to me, filled with ribbons of blue and red and gold, and in their great clouds, mindless in their scale, stars exploded to be reborn in ashes. I swam in a vastness not even a god could have—
‘Caltro!’ Temsa’s shout wrenched me back.
I snapped from the spell as if I had been shot by one of the triggerbows. ‘Fuck! What?!’
I found the cage bars in front of my face. The owl stood disturbingly close on the other side. I saw the size of the claws that gripped its tree branch, and I flinched away. Though I was eager to escape the tricksome beast, I had a hard time not staring back at it.
‘Fuck! Wh—who… How did it… I think I saw the whole world in those eyes. Fuck!’
‘Stop being dramatic. It’s just an owl.’
‘Some strange fucking owl.’ I stared back at it, looking for signs it was not a god in disguise, half-expecting it to drop dead from its perch any moment. All it did was croak at me, and shuffle back into the shadow. I stared at its sign. ‘A hexowl. Hmph.’
With a shudder, I rejoined Temsa and the soldiers as we waited patiently for Ani and Danib to go to work on the other gate. We didn’t have to wait long. Crashes and screams flooded the air. The barricade was torn aside by a great-axe, and Jexebel appeared through a cloud of splinters. She had the gate open within moments. A man wearing a conical helmet – or rather, the torso of a man wearing a conical helmet – flew out of the gateway mid-scream, showering the soldiers with gore. They cared little, too busy rushing through the wall like invaders on the tail of a victorious battering ram.
We trailed the soldiers, picking our way through pools of blood and lopped limbs. A score of bodies lay around us. Those who had fallen close to the cages were being pawed at by their inhabitants. A great cat, spotted black and white, had got rather lucky with a corpse slumped against its bars, and was already nibbling on the man’s shoulder.
The pace of the evening quickened as we hurried after the soldiers. Temsa’s tapping became an awkward canter. Clang. Tap. Clang. Tap. And repeat. This felt like a battle, not a burglary.
As the sound of fighting began to compete with the growing roar of the zoo, it became clear that it would be a fight all the way to Finel’s chambers. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or fearful for my vapours. I was on the soulstealing side, after all. Rooting for Temsa felt like a betrayal to myself, and so I watched and waited.
The next gate was under siege. Danib was using Pointy to break the bars one by one. Arrows and bolts ricocheted from the ghost’s breastplate and greaves, but he did not care. Temsa’s soldiers were already squirming through the holes he’d hacked. A bloody pile of bodies was growing beyond the gate.
‘The fucker’s putting up quite the fight,’ I commented idly.
Simple as twiddling a reed, Temsa spun his knife and jabbed me in the thigh. I saw the white light leaking from the hole in my smock. I hissed through clenched teeth. Hobbling a few paces away, I turned back to the cages and let Finel’s collection waste my time.
Here, the torches had been hooded with coloured glass, casting strange hues upon the zoo creatures. Palms grew over them, casting shade and hiding the stars.
Another great cat was encaged nearby. It paced and yowled at the ruckus, baring two great fangs that reached beyond its jaw. Its spine was ridged with rattling spikes and its tail came to a devilish point.
A trio of white wolves sat beyond, painted green by the unsettling lanterns. They licked their lips at the blood making streams of the cobbles.
In one great cage behind our circle of blades, I glimpsed an enormous shape, like an upturned fishing boat with thick legs and hooves. It was scratching at the ground and lowing like a cow, and an extremely disgruntled one at that. In the flashes of fire, I saw plates of armour on its back and spikes on its snout, which it was thudding against its bars. The iron was already starting to bend.
It was then that a new noise rang out above the din. A shrill horn, first from over the wall, and then a reply from somewhere in the streets behind us. I knew what it was before Temsa could summon the words.
‘Shit!’ Temsa cursed. ‘They’ve got reinforcements. Get moving, you ingrates!’
‘They’re bloody in, Tor!’ came a yell as we pushed through into the next set of walls.
I was expecting more cages, but instead the soldiers found wild grass and bushland under their boots. A bowshot away from us, a herd of armoured scarabs clipped at bushes and trilled between themselves. Beyond them, a long-legged creature strode sedately between palms, its three snakelike heads waving about as they nibbled at flowers.
As my gaze traced the stretch of wall encircling the grassland it soon became apparent this was not Finel’s garden, but a giant cage in itself. At its centre was a squat tower, black of brick and sporting a bulbous crown. It all looked a bit phallic to me. Lights studded it, but they were obscured by the mass of torches at its base, where a copse of sharp spears waited for us. I rolled my eyes with exasperation. I refused to die all over again because Temsa had bitten off more serek than he could chew.
Jexebel came striding up. She was bespattered with gore and yet somehow her expression was still more gruesome. ‘Fucking mess, this is. And now we’re trapped!’ she raged.
That word had a knack of striking worry into the heart of anyone. I had no heart, but it still struck something in my chest. I had wanted Temsa in tatters, and I would have settled for bloody strips, but I hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near him when it happened. A safe distance and a spyglass to watch the justice would have been perfect. I bit my lip and looked for gaps in the lines of soldiers around me.
Temsa was busy eyeing up the phalanxes of guards clustered around the tower. A horn sounded once again. ‘I don’t disagree, m’dear. Trapped, maybe, but not hopeless.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Get back to the cages! Find something fearsome, let it loose, and herd it straight at them!’
Ani Jexebel’s jaw didn’t know whether to rise or fall. She crooked a hand to her ear. ‘Let it loose…?’
‘You heard me! Let it loose!’
‘Then what? A siege? How long will that last? I say we cut our losses and leave.’
Personally, I agreed with Jexebel. I was about to interject and stir up their desperation, but Temsa beat me to it. Sparking mutiny was proving a lot easier than I thought.
‘You coward!’ he screeched at Jexebel, his knife waggling furiously in her face. She said nothing, spending the moment wiping the blood from her battleaxe, but the heat in her eyes spoke volumes.
Temsa snarled. ‘Danib! You lot! Get one of those cages open. Make it two!’
The men Temsa had pointed to visibly gulped, but did not move.
‘Go! Curse you!’ Temsa yelled, and with that, the soldiers trailed slowly after Danib, their eyes fixed on the knife in the
tor’s hand.
As we and the remaining soldiers – almost two-score of us lucky buggers – tucked ourselves behind the shattered gate, I heard the ring of an impossibly sharp blade shearing through metal bars. A roar followed, the roar of something extremely upset and hungry.
I heard a fresh round of shouting. The rhythmic beat of swords striking shields rose, and then a scream as a soldier came scrabbling back through the gateway. Two wiry creatures made of black hair pounced upon him and promptly ripped the spine from his back with paws the size of dinner plates. The man’s screams were hideous, but paled in comparison to the faces that turned to us afterwards, full of white burning eyes, bare of fur and made of bone instead. Their grins were full of sharp teeth and their many eyes shone like the windows of a city. The creatures seemed to be part-bear, part-wolf, part-daemon, and they howled at the taste of fresh blood. Danib appeared behind them, beating his metal chest to drive the creatures on. When they didn’t move, too busy snarling and flicking their long tongues, he wrenched the arm from a dead soldier and hurled it towards the tower.
It was a gruesome trick, but it worked. The arm sailed through the air with the bear-wolf things snapping their jaws beneath it. They had almost caught it when they noticed the spearpoints ahead, and realised a buffet was better than one sole arm. They leapt the weapons with ease and became a whirlwind of claws and black, matted hair. I wondered if they had longed to do such a thing while they toured their bars every day, watching their captors and guards and wondering what they tasted like. I was glad they had got their chance.
‘What fine animals! See, Ani? Our situation is far from hopeless,’ remarked Temsa. He marched towards the tower, leading the final charge. His soldiers and Jexebel swarmed with him.
I looked to Danib, who was already back at Temsa’s side. I realised the panic over being trapped had made them forget me. My wrists were still bound, but I was practically ignored. I felt the opportunity seize me, tight and sharp as pincers.