All the commotion could have fooled one into thinking things were bound to fall apart, that the centre couldn’t hold, things were going awry, and a load of other poetical jazz. But the truth was that the plan was sublime in its simplicity.
The brains would stay in the tower; the muscle would act as runners.
The rest would march north. They were travelling light, with no wagons, extra sundries or foodstuffs to weigh them down. They were taking saddles, bedrolls, a small sack of food apiece, water canteens, and their weapons. There would be no leniency for those who couldn’t keep up. People were going to be left behind.
Some would die of exposure or stupid accidents before they even arrived in Radden, of that there seemed little doubt. But the hundred riders all stood fast, and said their goodbyes: some stonily, some weeping and beslobbered; others holding their loved ones trembling, white-lipped, their eyes fixed on the middle distance.
Norman had been relying on Robert to lead the charge. He balked when the messenger dispatched to New Canterbury arrived back and announced that Robert would be delayed for ‘personal reasons’.
“But why?
Arnold, the rider, moved restlessly on his saddle as he trotted for the stables. “Part of getting the son of a bitch to come at all was on the condition that I leave his business out of this.”
Norman cursed and set to wandering the tower, easing his aching chest as things came together into something resembling an organised force. They were sending as many of the wounded away as they could, though dozens were in too serious a condition to even lift.
What went unsaid was that they were moving the wounded because they were too stark a reminder of what was to come. Morale was all they had left to keep them going. It was hard to stay brave and chipper with a hundred screaming, bloodied friends and family lying riddled with holes on the sixth floor.
Now that decisions had been finalised, everyone was itching to move. The time for sentimentality had evaporated, and they longed to take the steps that might just save them.
Behind the discussions on the best route to ride north, which weapons to take, what they would do if the radio transmission turned out to be a genuine distress call—and what they would do if it was something more sinister—Norman’s stomach tap-danced, as he wondered how he could ride north on a few fractured ribs without doing himself serious damage.
He was well on the way to healing, but this kind of exertion was plain stupid. If Heather had been there, she would have surely had him laid up to rest somewhere. The very idea of her signing off on him traipsing away into the unknown with a hundred burly men was enough to get him laughing—exactly what somebody with broken ribs didn’t need.
But he had to keep that to himself, even if it was killing him inside. Even if he ended up a cripple for the rest of his life. Even if riding north killed him. That was his lot.
John DeGray and Richard had formulated several strategies and contingencies in short order and had given a crash course on the terrain they would be covering. Norman had expected that they would cover a little politics and negotiating tactics; Old World libraries were full of that kind of academic spiel. But they hadn’t said a word about it. Instead, they had done something that would have been funny, had their faces not been so grave and fearful.
“We’re going with you,” John said, his rotund bulk emphasized by a glum slouch. He sounded resigned to it, as though he were relaying orders received from a higher power.
Norman would sooner have taken Oppenheimer’s daughter. The professor was lithe as a two-hundred-pound boulder and on a good day was bound to fall off his mount at the sight of uneven ground.
But it wasn’t DeGray that troubled Norman the most. It was Richard. He didn’t look resigned at all, but eager and excited, like a younger sibling pacing around the feet of his elders, itching to be part of the football game.
It’s like the attack on New Canterbury all over again, the night Ray was killed.
Neither of them had any place out there in the wild lands. They were too insulated from the grotesqueries of the world. It was a strange thing, to have people so senior in their order be so naive and innocent, but that was a by-product of the Old World way.
They belonged in the classroom, cataloguing the books and records brought back from the wastes, laboriously passing that knowledge on to the next generation.
Yet they seemed set on Radden. The fear in their eyes indicated they knew they would probably not come back, but that they also knew the expedition would go to ruin without them.
Norman didn’t want to admit it, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Richard had saved his life during the New Canterbury attack. He would be dead if Richard hadn’t pulled him from the crossfire.
Might as well accept it, their faces said.
What could he do? There were more messed up things about the expedition anyway.
Things are backward: those in the lead are broken, nervous wrecks, and the hundred at our command are holding things together. This is going to be a weird couple of days.
He kept walking, trying to ignore the creeping frost biting at his fingertips and stabbing at his earlobes. He couldn’t fade away to that dark place, not now. Not again. He sensed that if he sank back into the shadows, he might not be able to get back.
And what then? He might be lost to that alien place, between worlds, in that non-space where all those Old World people bawled. Or, the alternative: he really was crazy, and would spend the rest of his life a vacant drooling idiot.
Shaking his head, trying to ignore the edges of Echoes slithering in his peripheral vision, he kept on walking until he left Richard and DeGray behind, and was walking at random through the crowd.
He didn’t stop until Alexander appeared amongst it all, the spider at the centre of the vast web—
Spider. At the middle of it all, there’s always a spider, spinning the web of reality under the Pendulum’s swing.
Norman blinked away a mental flash of eight enormous, arachnoid eyes, and approached Alexander. They fell into step on a parallel path, so as not to arouse attention.
“Be honest,” Norman said, hating the tap of his cane on the ground. “Just once. Tell me, did you think this time would ever come? Really believe that I could do what you promised them?”
Only a beat passed before Alexander answered. “No. I didn’t.”
Norman nodded. He expected a swell of rage to twist his hands into claws. But he didn’t feel a thing. In fact, he felt relieved because he knew that, finally, what Alexander said was the truth.
He had earned that. It was a small victory, but it was more than he had had before.
“Then why?” he said. “You didn’t need me. They always looked to you like you were a god.”
“I’m just a man. No matter how many people believed in the mission or in me, it could never have matched the kind of belief that comes with something greater.”
“But I’m just a man, too.”
“It doesn’t matter. They were taught to dream of a man who they didn’t see before them. But all they need is faith in the idea that the metamorphosis was possible.”
“You played with my life for an idea.”
“And I’d do it again.”
There it was. It had finally been said.
Would it really have been so hard to tell it like it was a long time ago? Couldn’t he have respected me enough to tell me that I was expendable, just another pawn? I knew it, and he knew I knew.
Still, it had finally come out.
He stopped and turned to Alexander. “Thank you.”
Alexander’s eyes softened for a moment. “I’m leaving within the hour.”
Norman flinched. “What?”
“I’m leaving.”
“To go where?” he hissed, gripping Alexander’s arm.
He stumbled a tad and his ribs screeched in unison, but he ignored the pain. The Echoes drifting in his peripheral vision faded, and the cold numbing his fingertips was suddenly
gone. He had been shaken back to the here and now. But that didn’t detract from the strength of his grip, nor the panic boiling in his gut.
Alexander’s gaze remained cool. “Away from here, before I get anyone else killed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You saw what happened when I went after Oppenheimer. They’re after me. All of this is because of me. Maybe if I go, this place stands a chance.”
“Without you, we definitely don’t stand a chance.”
“I’ve done all I can—all the damage I can. It’s you they’re going to look to now. I might be able to warn a few others.”
“You can’t be serious. We’re all staring death in the face instead of running for the hills because we believe in your mumbo-jumbo about saving the world.
“I know this … revenge kick, or vendetta, or whatever it is—it might make sense if I could remember just what the hell happened, but I don’t, because of this.” He pointed to the scar at his hairline. “You don’t want to tell me? Fine. You want me to play ‘good dog’ anyway? That’s fine too. But I am not going to let you run for the hills and let all these people burn so you can save your sorry skin.”
Alexander’s expression hadn’t changed at all. “I don’t care what happens to me. If I stay here, I’ll make the tower a giant bull’s-eye.”
“What would be the point? They’re gone. They wouldn’t know you weren’t here.”
Alexander looked up at the surrounding skyscrapers, his face screwed up against the sun’s glare. “They’re still watching. They’d never give us too long a leash. I bet they could have overrun this place long ago, if they wanted. All this is just a game to him, to teach me a lesson.”
Norman’s heart skipped a beat.
“Him?”
A dark frown crossed Alexander’s brow, and he looked away from the distant spires. They had reached the stables, where a small pile of goods had been laid out. He threw a tattered brown cloak over his back, slung a leather knapsack upon his shoulder, and took up a long staff.
Sometimes this messiah complex can be a little hard on the nose.
“They won’t understand,” Norman said helplessly. “None of them will.”
“I know. But I still have to go. It’s your job to keep them together.”
“I can’t. I don’t even know if I can get on the back of a bloody horse.”
“Yes, you can. I believe in you.”
“You just said you never believed in me.”
Alexander looked at him afresh, all the way up and down, and Norman was surprised to see a lack of that certain disappointment—something bordering on disdain—that he had always noted behind his eyes. “I do now. You’re … different.”
Norman couldn’t help laughing. “You sound surprised.”
They headed toward the main gate, Alexander now a mere amorphous pile of rags, unrecognised by the crowd.
“What do I tell them? They’re going to notice that you’ve up and disappeared.”
“That’s why I have to move fast.” He nodded his cloaked head to the catwalk above the gate, and the klaxon sounded. The gates squealed open and the guards trained their rifles upon the streets, but amidst the heavy preparations, not many people seemed to notice.
Alexander turned back to Norman, adopting a pronounced slouch to hide his face. “The other councillors know I’m leaving. But you’re right. The others won’t understand. Keep this under wraps as long as you can.”
“What do I tell them?”
Alexander shrugged. “That you’ll have to figure out for yourself. Use your head. You’ve got a good one on those shoulders.”
Norman scowled. “Fine. Get out of here.”
Alexander laid a hand on his shoulder. His grip was hard, painful. “Radden is a strange place, Norman.” Suddenly, Norman sensed fear in him.
Is that why he’s really leaving? Because of that place?
In that moment, Norman could have believed it. Alexander’s haunted eyes shuddered in their sockets.
Alexander grunted. “Get the job done, and bring them all back safe.”
Norman swallowed. “Go.” He had no idea a single word could taste so bitter.
Alexander Cain’s gaze lingered on him a final moment, then the Messiah turned, and left his kingdom in his wake.
SEVENTH INTERLUDE
The early hours of that morning were the longest of James’s life. As the moon slunk behind the gnarled branches of the skeletal forests, and dark of night gave way to the pale blue of coming dawn, all thought abandoned him, and the floor warmed with his pacing steps. So many times did he pass back and forth over the same diagonal stretch of his room that he began to feel like a caged animal, some feral feline trussed up in the gloom, afraid and confused and alone.
Eventually, the sky grew pale, and all manner of twittering songbirds that roosted in the farmstead’s eaves were in the full swing of their morning chorus. Dew nestled on the flourishing crop-heads, and the troops of hired hands that were fast becoming family were already appearing along the long gravelled road.
Yet to James, it was all a bad joke—a pretty, membranous shawl pulled over a nightmarish ghoul. The tug of the visions plaguing his every waking thought was visceral, almost painful, as though at any moment it might disembowel him.
He had almost immediately come to regret letting Alex talk him out of leaving in the night. He had returned to his room on legs itching to be in the saddle, and flashes of torchlit catacombs and great expanses of weather-beaten moorland tortured him from the shadows.
He made for the kitchen once the flagstones of his diagonal path had reached body temperature from his pacing, and he spent what might have been another hour striding back and forth before the long farmhouse table before Alex made his appearance.
James wasted no time at the sight of him. “Well?”
Alex held up a hand to hush him. He looked no less tired than James felt himself, skin drawn and translucent, hair ruffled, and clothes creased in great folds. “Just … hear me out.”
James felt that he might explode, but through enormous effort brought himself to the table and took a deep breath. Fingers drumming the planks, he nodded jerkily and gestured for Alex to go on.
Christ, I’m like an addict. All twitches and nervous laughter.
Alex took some time before speaking. His eyes wandered the walls as though seeing through to the bedrooms of the others and reading their slumbering faces. “We’ll both go. But they can’t know about this. They won’t believe it.”
“But you do?”
I’m not sure I believe it, myself. Why the hell hasn’t he beaten me over the head and put me in a straitjacket already?
Alex looked disturbed, as though angry at himself. “It’s crazy, James.”
“But you do believe me, don’t you?”
Alex licked his lips, his unkempt golden beard catching stray winks of refracted morning light. His eyes searched him up and down. “Yes,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“Radden.” He looked shaken, as though giving voice to his thoughts had given them power and reality. “You can’t know about that place. I know you can’t.” His eyes flashed with something haunted. “You were just a baby.”
James let him stew a moment, but then the pull of the will infecting him took over. “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m afraid, Alex. But I know I have to go.” He hesitated, then stammered. “It can’t wait. Will you come with me?”
“I will, but you have to give me—”
“I can’t. I can’t wait.”
Their eyes met across the silent kitchen, and Alex nodded slowly. “God damn it all,” he muttered. “Alright.”
*
They were almost saddled up when the procession of mounted riders passed the farmstead gates and came trotting up the mile-long road. James cursed aloud and heard Alex groan in annoyance.
“Perfect,” Alex spat.
“What is it?”
“They’re
here.”
It took James a moment to realise who he was talking about.
Malverston’s lot, he thought. A thousand trilling alarms were tripped inside his head.
That meant waking the others. That meant their clean getaway was marred beyond repair. What could have been a clean break into the heart of the macabre was about to become an awkward, sticky dance.
James swore continuously as the group approaching covered the last hundred yards to the central square. He hadn’t known anyone could hold so many curses within them.
Then everything fell through the floor, and a nest of butterflies was loosed upon James’s insides. Because though the riders were mostly those he expected—vapid, fox-faced men with puckered eyes and yellowed skin—sandwiched between them was the last person on Earth he would have bet on.
Riding with an iron stare and straight-backed dignity was Beth Tarbuck.
*
James didn’t think; he reacted in the only way befitting the situation. He hid. He hid badly, scurrying behind his mount, ignoring the fact his own legs would still be visible amongst the horse’s.
No. Nobody’s luck can be that bad. No, no, no …
Alex cursed under his breath, his hand raised in welcome, face drawn into a plastic grin. “James,” he said in a perfect calm monotone.
“What?”
“Get the others, now. Full alert. I want as many guns on them as we’ve got.”
James didn’t wait another beat. With a twisted retinal ghost of Beth shimmering before his eyes, he scrambled away towards the stable door and dove for cover, slinking into the nook between the stables and the utility shed, spluttering cobwebs from his lips and pushing through slicks of leaf-mulch and accrued detritus.
Behind him, diplomatic greetings were exchanged from afar. The rumble of hooves upon packed earth rattled the stable wall, amplified by the hollow space inside so it sounded as though a hundred riders approached instead of a dozen. Then he sprinted around the back of the compound, keeping low to the ground, ignoring the cold bite of dew quickly soaking into his trousers and shirtsleeves.
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