But he never got an answer.
Haliden grabbed both his legs and pushed him over the side.
The brute named Dren turned as his comrade’s screams echoed across the Stretch. “What the f—” But before he could finish, Haliden rushed forward and slammed his head against the side of the crane.
“We didn’t want this!” Haliden yelled as he turned on the spitter. “We just wanted quarter!”
The spitter halted a few footfalls away. “And let a bunch of beggars and diseased louts flood across the Acid? Piss on you and your rabble!” He lunged forward and slashed at Haliden’s chest.
Haliden sidestepped the attack and rushed forward, locking arm in arm with the man.
“You fucking scag!” the spitter growled. He grabbed a fistful of Haliden’s hair and yanked his head back. But Haliden stomped on his boot and slammed his fist into the man’s nose.
“Mother fucker!” the spitter growled as blood dripped down chest.
“Just open the gate,” Haliden said.
The man smiled, his teeth bloody and chipped. “Go to the hells!” He turned around and pulled the metal pin from the mechanism.
The crane retracted the counterbalance and slammed the inner gate shut below.
Laughing, the spitter tossed the pin over the wall. “I hope you’ve settled your debts with the gods.”
A bell began frantically ringing below.
Haliden rushed forward and grabbed the man’s throat.
“Fuck you… scag!” the spitter gasped as he clawed at the artist’s hands. When that didn’t work, he began kicking the ground, desperation widening his bulging eyes.
Haliden squeezed harder, his fingernails cutting into flesh as the man’s body slowly went limp.
When it was finally over, Haliden rolled the man aside and crawled to the Tritan gearbox. The mechanism consisted of a dense cluster of odd metal gears and springs covered in ash and rust. But without the pin, there would be no way to lock the counterbalance into position once the gate was raised.
“Damn it!” He scanned the ground for anything he could use in its place. But there was nothing.
Nothing save for the spitter’s corpse.
Haliden approached the body and lifted the man’s arm. It was thin and emaciated. Just the right size to fit through the slot, he realized.
His stomach turned as he dragged the corpse to the base of the mechanism. When he was in position he pulled the lever, lowering the counterbalance over the wall.
A bell began ringing below.
Haliden ignored it and forced the spitter’s arm through the slot. When it was secure, he released the lever, dropping the counterbalance several inches as the locking gear bit into the spitter’s flesh.
Blood oozed down the man’s arm as metal ground against muscle and bone. But miraculously the counterbalance held.
Exhausted, Haliden ran to the edge of the wall and looked down.
Mobs were now surging against Beggar’s Gate, shouting and throwing stones even as the guards peppered them with bolts.
Damn it! he thought. As long as Beggar’s Gate remained shut, the refugees, himself included, were as good as dead.
Haliden turned back to the vent. It was a hundred footfalls south of the guardhouse, hidden behind a stack of crates. But as he approached it, he noticed a plume of oily black smoke coiling from the shaft.
“Damn!”
The only other way off the roof was through a door on the opposite side of the guardhouse. But it was locked with a Tritan crusher seal.
Desperate, he turned back to the counterbalance. Its steel cable stretched all the way to the tunnel roof. An eight hundred footfall drop straight over the edge. Even if I make it down, he thought. I’ll be stranded atop the tunnel surrounded by dozens of guards.
But there were no other options.
Trembling, he tore two strips from his shirt and wound them tight around his palms. He then climbed onto one of the crenellations and grabbed the cable with both hands.
“If anyone is listening up there, watch over me,” he whispered as he transferred his weight onto the cable and dropped.
The friction quickly burned through his rags and singed his palms as wind roared past his ears.
I tried, my love, he thought as his life flashed before his eyes.
And what a life it had been. Self-centered and insulated from the realities surrounding him. Choosing work over family and friends. And for what? A few stretched pieces of canvas covered in paint spatterings? Some gold in his pocket and the winks of lords and ladies who would forget his name as quickly as their own servants’?
When he hit the bottom, he was tossed across the tunnel rooftop. His ankles and wrists throbbed from the impact, and for a time he lay silent, drifting in and out of consciousness as voices echoed beneath him.
“Ember,” he moaned as he rolled over and stared across the scorched plain. He squinted as the light burned into his retinas. The distant cliffs were now completely gone, engulfed by the Breath.
There’s no more time!
A bell frantically rang beneath him. Moments later a trapdoor opened a few dozen footfalls to his right.
Haliden froze as a man turned toward him.
“We got one on the roof!” the guard cried.
Haliden quickly crawled toward the tunnel’s edge. But two more trapdoors opened to his left, revealing a pair of archers with arrows drawn.
An arrow grazed his arm, another his hand. He cried out, clutching the wounds. But more followed, the shafts exploding beside him and casting fragments into his exposed flesh.
With nowhere else to go, he slid over the side of the tunnel.
Weightlessness embraced him as he tumbled into the void. But instead of hitting ash and rock, he landed atop flesh and bone.
“You fucker!” a woman screamed as he sank into the undulating mob. “My children! You’d let them die?”
Someone yanked his hair back and punched him in the spine.
“Cut his throat!” a voice shouted.
“Fucking kill him!”
A wall of terrified faces and clawing hands engulfed him, clamoring for his flesh. Every now and again, an arrow pierced someone’s arm or chest beside him, spraying blood across his face. But whenever someone fell, another took his or her place.
“I’m a runner!” Haliden screamed with what little breath he had. But his voice was drowned out by the chaos.
“Kill him!” a man shouted. “He’s a guard! Kill ’em all!”
Someone dragged him onto his feet. Nails scraped his exposed flesh and fists pounded his back.
“Watch out!” a voice screamed.
There was a loud thud, followed by a horrid gurgling.
Haliden fell to the ground. Not more than three footfalls away, a woman lay crushed beneath a massive boulder, blood pulsing from her mouth as she stared at him.
A pair of hands curled around his chest and lifted him onto someone’s shoulder.
“He’s a bloody runner, you animals!”
He was being spirited through the chaos, the world upside down as a boy no older than Evetner ran alongside him.
“Who is he?” the boy asked.
“Our last hope,” Haliden’s savior replied.
When they were beyond the archers’ reach, the man knelt down and lowered Haliden onto the ground.
“Look,” he said, drawing back Haliden’s sleeve.
The boy’s eyes widened at the sight of the scar. “By the gods! Where did you find him?”
“He was up top!” the man replied. “The god’s only know why, though. Saw him fall from the crane onto the tunnel.”
The boy inched closer. He was completely bald—even his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone—and blisters covered his face. But his blue eyes sparkled with hope. “So where’s the venermin?”
“You heard him, speak up!” the other man shouted. “There’s little time left!”
Haliden coughed. His lungs felt as if they were filled with glass and his back an
d chest throbbed. “Haliden,” he said. “I’m a runner… we have… two venermin.”
His savior’s face loomed over him, wrinkled and weathered. And like the boy, he, too, was completely bald. “Two venermin, you say?”
Haliden nodded.
“Why were you atop the gate then?”
“We found a shaft. I climbed to the top to open the Maw.”
The man shook his head. “Bullshit!”
Several arrows splintered beside them as men and women retreated across the Stretch.
“Why would I lie?”
“Decker… you see these wagons he’s spoke of?”
The boy shook his head. “Nothing but catamarans and broken down carts.”
The older man withdrew a water skin from his satchel and handed it to Haliden.
Haliden quickly drank it down.
“We need to find your friends,” the man said.
Haliden noted his use of “we” and bristled. “And why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m trying to save my son,” the man replied. “If you don’t trust me, take my boy here instead. He’ll do whatever has to be done to get through.”
Haliden was taken aback by this. He doesn’t even know me, yet he’ll entrust his son’s life to me?
“How many are you?” Haliden asked.
“Just us.”
“Look!” Decker cried, pointing eastward. “Wagons! Over there!”
Haliden turned. A tiny silhouette was indeed approaching. But before he could celebrate, a verax ran past toward the wall, its fur engulfed in flames.
Haliden watched as the living fireball bounded toward Beggar’s Gate, snarling and snapping as refugees scattered out of the way.
“This is madness!” the old man spat.
Haliden held his breath as the wagons approached. “Here!” he cried, waving. “Over here!”
The wagons drew up alongside the three men and ground to a halt. When the dust cleared, Gremin’s head popped out of the felltower’s severed throat.
“Artist?”
Haliden slowly stood and nodded.
“You know you created quite a mess over there.”
A section of hide flipped back and Evetner and the boys looked down at him.
Gremin turned to Decker and the old man. “And who are these two?”
The man pulled his son behind him and bowed. “Denelby Sabon. And this is my boy, Decker.”
Gremin sighed. “I suppose you’ll be needing a ride too?”
“That would be kind of you,” the man said.
Haliden limped past the punchers and climbed aboard the lead wagon. “Come on then,” he said. “We’re almost out of time.”
Gremin stared at the tunnel and shook his head. “You do know even if we get past Beggar’s Gate, they’ll just prickle us with bolts, artist. And them boys are good shots, too. Damn near crushed us with a rock while you were fucking around up top.”
“You have a better idea?” Haliden asked.
The man and his son sat down opposite the brothers.
Jonathan waved at Decker, but Brandon ignored them.
“We need cover,” Evetner said. “Something we can carry to the gate and use as a shield while we figure out a way in.”
Haliden nodded. “There’s scrap everywhere. We could fashion something with it.”
“Very well,” Gremin said. “But what of the dogs?”
“We’ll put them in the rear wagon,” Evetner said. “Along with the boys and the other two.”
“And how in the hells do you suppose we move the wagons then?”
Haliden gestured to the harnesses. “That’s on us now.”
Gremin laughed. “You’re fucking joking, right?”
“Do I look like I am?”
Gremin shook his head. “You got balls, artist. You’re a fool, but you got balls.”
Haliden sighed. “I guess we’ll see. “
27
The night succumbed to unnatural day as the Breath swallowed the plain.
Haliden ignored it, hammering the final plank into place with a fist-sized rock. “All right. That about does it.”
They had covered the rear wagon with pieces of broken crates and scrap wood scrounged from the surrounding area. Much of it was riddled with dry rot and termite damage. But it will have to do.
“She sure ain’t pretty,” Gremin said.
Haliden shielded his eyes as he scanned the plain. To the west, a circle of refugees lay dead atop the scorched ground, draba birds plucking at their pallid flesh. He had seen them earlier, sitting hard at prayer as a fire priest passed out vials of clear liquid. And now they’re dead to a man, he thought. Rotting in the shadow of the Block.
To the east, a fight had broken out between two opposing clans unfortunate enough to meet in the chaos. Tribesmen from both sides lay dead at the edge of the scuffle, women and children lamenting beside their corpses as the Breath cast their shadows onto the Block.
Evetner adjusted his armor and sheathed his sword. “We need to go.”
Gremin slapped the wagon. “You ready, artist?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“All right then.” Gremin lifted the last of the punchers into the wagon and smiled.
“What in the hells are you so happy about?” Evetner asked.
Gremin shrugged. “Never thought I’d meet my maker like this. Men in my profession normally come to their end in the belly of a verax, or broken at the bottom of some lonely ravine. Not pushing two venermin before the Breath.”
Haliden raised the Tritan scope to his eye and scanned Beggar’s Gate.
A handful of refugees wielding shields and scrap wood probed the entrance. But something else caught Haliden’s eye.
A large metal sheet had opened above the main gate, revealing three guards with an unarmored man kneeling before them.
One of the men shouted something unintelligible before kicking the kneeling man over the side.
Haliden watched as the refugees swarmed around the man’s body.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” he said.
Without a word, Gremin drew his dagger and marched toward the mob.
“Well where in the hells are you going?”
“Bet my life he’s a mutineer, artist,” Gremin shouted over his shoulder. “And that means he knows the gate. And possibly her weak spots.”
Haliden took off after him. Bodies lay everywhere, quarrels jutting from chests and backs like porcupine quills.
“This is a bad idea, friend,” he said as he negotiated the mess.
The trapper ignored him. When he reached the edge of the mob he pushed his way forward. Several men tried to encircle him, but when he raised the nagra blade they quickly backed off.
The armored man lay only a few dozen footfalls away, surrounded by a handful of shouting refugees.
“Kill him!” a woman cried as she kicked the man in the stomach. “Send his head back to ’em!”
Gremin pushed past them and knelt beside the guard.
“And who the fuck are you?” the woman shouted.
A man grabbed the trapper by the shoulder, but Gremin tossed him against the gate. Another man tried to hook his arm around his throat, but Gremin twisted free and stabbed him in the side for his troubles.
“Watch out!” someone cried.
Haliden ground to a halt a few dozen footfalls from the trapper.
The guards were loosing another volley.
“Run!” someone cried.
Haliden was too close to flee. So in his great wisdom he did the next best thing and ran for the side of the tunnel.
Refugees collapsed before him, their meager shields useless against the volley of arrows and crossbow bolts.
So now what, fool? he thought as he pressed his back against the cold steel. If he tried to rejoin the wagons, he’d be an easy target. But if I stay here I burn. He cursed himself for following the trapper. But isn’t this how you always get yourself into trouble? Run
ning headfirst into the void, chasing after everything that tastes so much better before it’s chewed?
It was how I lost you, too, wasn’t it, Milane? How I lost everything.
“Why the fuck did you do it, Grel?” a voice shouted above him.
Haliden stood still, his breath held as voices argued above him.
“He was going to open the fucking gate, you tart!” the man named Grel replied. “Would you have every rotter and beggar flood the Block? You don’t think they’d toss us next?”
“He was doing the right thing,” the younger voice said. “Them folks deserve sanctuary as much as them rich fuckers nestled up inside the wall.”
Grel chuckled. “Is that what you think, Drenden?”
“The others agree,” the man named Drenden replied. “Even if they’re too fuckin’ yellow to admit it.”
Haliden leaned away from the wall and peeked at the roof. Two men stood inches apart a few footfalls beyond one of the death ports.
“I killed that fucker to save your yellow ass, you little clown!” Grel said. “No pendant, no entry. That’s the order!”
“And what of the runners?”
“A bunch of Marigel rotters? You want to spread that shit across the Acid?”
“Two venermin you turned back!” the man named Drenden spat. “A runner with two godsdamn venermin and two pendants, and still you refused him!”
“They came from Marigel! You know what’s happened there, right? You know what the Rot will do if takes hold again?”
“The Rot’s been dead for turns!” Drenden spat.
Other voices mumbled in agreement.
“He’s right, Grel!” someone shouted. “Them runners got a place here. More than anyone. More than you, even!”
The metallic screech of a sword being drawn echoed off the wall.
Haliden’s heart quickened. At least someone has sense up there.
“Cross my orders and your guts will know this shit steel. That goes for all of you!”
Feet shuffled as voices hooted and hollered. Moments later, a cry echoed across the plain, followed by a hollow thud.
Haliden hugged the wall as a body toppled over the edge, splashing into the mud a few footfalls from his feet.
“You fucking twit!” Grel shouted as the scuffle continued. There was a wet thwack, followed by an awful wheezing sound.
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