Haliden's Fire

by Chris Sendrowski

  “He shouldn’t be here,” the boy grumbled.

  “You’re right,” Jenner said. He grabbed his sleeve and tore it back. “See this!” He thrust a horseshoe-shaped scar into Evetner’s face. “That’s the mark of a master breeder. I was apprenticed to Galaway Thren, the greatest breeder in all of Alimane. I was to take over Thren Stables when I came of age. But instead, I was conscripted into the Block guard.” He covered the scar and spat at Evetner’s feet. “No goodbyes to family or friends. No nothing! They came in the night and dragged me to this godsforsaken rock. And here I’ve lived, for nigh on three turns now. So piss on your judgement, boy.”

  Evetner fumed, but kept his mouth shut.

  “None of us chose this,” Jenner went on. “So let’s just get this done and be on our way before the fire roasts us all.”

  A blast of searing wind peeled back the hide.

  Haliden grabbed the loose corner and tucked it down. But not before he saw dozens of human torches running toward them.

  “By the gods!”

  Some were half-burnt and blackened, others completely on fire as the flames coiled around their writhing, howling bodies.

  The punchers went wild, snarling and scratching the side of the wagon.

  Haliden turned back to the south. Gremin was running to them, a bloody object swinging in his grip.

  “Get ready!” then trapper cried. When he was in range, he punctured the gland with a stick and hurled it against the right side of the tunnel.

  “They’re coming,” he gasped, his hands and face soaked with felltower blood.

  Moments later, an eerie howl echoed across the plain.

  Haliden lifted part of the shielding. Three verax and a pair of enormous felltowers were running directly at them.

  Gremin dived into the wagon as the beasts ran past. “They’ll have their hands full now,” he gasped.

  Jenner looked to Haliden and thrust out his hand. “Give me the damn key!”

  “What?”

  “Come on!” the man said. “My people put us here. Let me try to right it.”

  Reluctantly, Haliden handed it over.

  Jenner nodded. “See you inside.”

  Haliden followed Jenner to the edge of the gate and watched as the guard crept along the base of the tunnel.

  Brandon lifted the hide and squinted at the golden light. “Who are those people?”

  Haliden turned. A group of laptane-clad figures were stumbling toward them from the south.

  Evetner drew his sword. “Stay down, boys.”

  The group collapsed beside the wagon, gasping and coughing as they tore off their laptane masks.

  “Please!” a man said. “If not us, then at least take the girls.” He was old, possibly seventy turns or more. An arrow jutted from his chest and blood covered most of his laptane suit. Beside him stood two trembling teenage girls.

  Evetner looked at Haliden and shook his head. “There’s no room.”

  “Forget that.” Haliden ran over and extended his hand to one of the girls. She was red-haired and freckled, her green eyes trembling and wide.

  “What the fuck are you doing, artist?”

  “I’m not going to leave them to the fire!” Haliden shouted as he lifted her into the wagon. “Not while there’s still a chance!”

  “You forget there’s hundreds more. You plan on letting them aboard as well?”

  “If need be!” Haliden jumped into the wagon and grabbed an armload of his paintings. “We’ll make room.” He tossed them over the side, the frames cracking and splintering atop the rocky ground.

  “Come on!” Haliden shouted. “Help me!”

  Evetner shook his head. “This is madness.”

  As the men cleared out the paintings, the girls helped the wounded man aboard.

  “By the gods,” the older man wept, collapsing beside the woman. His face was pale and he was shivering violently.

  “Be still, Father,” the red-haired girl said as she wiped ash from his face and knotty beard.

  A metallic shriek echoed across the plain.

  “It’s opening!” a voice shouted from atop the tunnel.

  Haliden lifted the hide. The gate was swinging inward, revealing the deadly stretch of booby-trapped tunnel beyond.

  “They’re right!” he cried. “Beggar’s Gate is opening!”

  A bell began tolling in the distance.

  Gremin smiled. “He did it. That fucker did it!”

  “Go!” one of the girls screamed.

  Haliden jumped off the wagon and peered around the tunnel. Jenner stood a hundred footfalls away, surrounded by three drooling verax.

  “Forget him!” Gremin shouted. “Nothing we can do now.”

  Haliden ran back to the wagon and grabbed his bow. But by the time he returned, the verax were already tearing the guard to pieces.

  “Damn it!” Haliden cried. He ran back to the wagon and lifted the hide. “Evetner?”

  The boy turned from the mutilated woman, his eyes sunken and sad. “She’s gone.”

  Haliden sighed. “Keep the boys close.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Someone has to keep them off us. I’ll watch the rear, you watch the front.”

  “I should be out there. Let me do it.”

  Haliden pointed to the brothers. “They need you more than me. Just get them inside.”

  Evetner slowly nodded. “There’s more to you than I expected, artist.”

  “We’ll see. I still have time to fuck this up.”

  Gremin jumped onto the ground and crouched behind the wagons. “We ready?”

  Haliden nocked an arrow and nodded. “Can you handle it alone?”

  “Depends. Got any more of that weed?”

  Haliden reached into his pocket and tossed him the jar. Some bits and pieces remained, but nothing more.

  Gremin popped it into his mouth and swallowed. “Here’s to one last run, eh, artist?”

  Haliden nodded. “I’ll watch our backs while you push. Just don’t stop until we’re in.”

  Gremin nodded. “Not until we’re in.”

  Dozens of giant, mechanized Tritan crossbows lined either side of the tunnel, each bearing spring-activated reloaders connected to pressure plates hidden beneath the tunnel floor. One false step, and they would be showered with bolts.

  All this just to keep us out? Haliden thought as he scanned the tunnel floor.

  Several refugees ran past. One was halfway down the tunnel when a loud click reverberated beneath his feet.

  “Watch out!” Haliden shouted.

  The Tritan crossbows turned on the man and fired. Within seconds, he and is companions were skewered with dozens of bolts.

  Several slammed into the wagons as they entered the field of fire. Haliden kept close to the trapper, even as steel heads cracked through the makeshift shielding they’d hung over the back.

  When the assault was over, the crossbows clicked back into their initial positions.

  Haliden sighed. But his relief was short-lived. Moments later, a guttural howl resonated at the far end of the tunnel.

  “We have a problem,” Evetner said.

  Haliden peeked around the wagon. Thirty yards ahead a lone matron verax tore into one of the dead men.

  “What is it?” Gremin grunted.

  “Verax. Ahead of us.”

  “How in the hells did it get in there?” Gremin shouted.

  The beast spotted the wagons and stepped out into the center of the tunnel. As its dead, white eyes widened, three more male verax jumped down from a port in the upper left side of the tunnel.

  “I’ll take the big one!” Haliden shouted. “Evetner! You have the other two!”

  “I don’t think I can,” the boy said. A bolt jutted from his armored shoulder, the tip peaking through his back.

  “Jonathan…” he said. “He can take the shot.”

  Jonathan stood at his side, his hands trembling as he gripped a bow.

  “Are you m
ad?” Haliden cried.

  “I can do it,” Jonathan said. He raised the bow and nocked an arrow.

  Haliden cringed as the boy drew back the bowstring with trembling arms.

  “Go for the one on the left,” Evetner said, wincing as he knelt beside him.

  Jonathan nodded, the bowstring warbling clumsily as he stared down the shaft.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes,” the little boy replied.

  “Okay. Take it down!”

  The arrow hissed through the air, hitting the beast’s right shoulder with a thud. But it kept coming.

  “Again!” Evetner cried.

  Jonathan drew back, hesitated, and then released.

  This time the verax stumbled and fell, the arrow jutting from its skull.

  Haliden raised the Tritan bow, ignoring the scope as he drew back and loosed.

  The arrow punctured the matron verax just below its throat. But like the other, it kept coming, it’s black fangs glistening in the Breath’s flickering light.

  A loud crack filled the air.

  The matron ground to a halt as pieces of wood and steel crashed down around it.

  “Watch out!” Evetner screamed.

  Gremin paled. An enormous shadow was passing over a fresh hole gouged in the tunnel roof. “In the name of all things good and mighty…”

  A colossal, fur covered claw smashed through the hole, crushing the matron verax like an ant.

  “A dyran!” Jonathan cried. “Look, Bran—a dyran!”

  Fire-blasted scales drifted past their eyes as the titan dragged the verax back through the hole.

  Haliden’s jaw dropped as the giant devoured the verax whole. “Impossible,” he muttered.

  The strange, sloth-like monstrosity stood almost four hundred footfalls tall, a sackcloth black mane running down it’s arched, scale-encrusted spine.

  Evetner’s eyes widened. “It’s almost as tall as the bloody wall!”

  Haliden stood in awe of it. Until now, the creatures had been nothing but myth, a tale whispered to children at bedtime.

  But no longer.

  A strange, piping call echoed from the massive beast’s mouth.

  “Look! There’s another!” Jonathan shouted.

  Haliden turned just as an enormous leg smashed through the tunnel behind them. Steel and wood scaffolding entangled around its massive ankles. But the dyran walked on, kicking the detritus aside as if they were pestering weeds.

  Haliden’s heart stopped. The dyran’s black, fur-covered face was flat like the face of a cliff, its single, cyclopean eye white and lifeless. It had neither ears nor nostrils, and its teeth resembled cracked pillars covered in spotted ivy.

  “By the gods!” Evetner shouted. “It has a bloody baby, too!”

  A cub clung to one of the dyran’s bellies, its claws wedged between creases in the mother’s scaly hide.

  A beam fell a few footfalls from Haliden, casting splinters into his face. Rubble lay everywhere, a maze of razor-sharp steel and flaming wood.

  Evetner jumped off the wagon and, with his good arm, began dragging debris from their path.

  Jonathan quickly joined him, his little arms straining as he lifted pieces of twisted scaffolding.

  Gremin turned to Haliden. “Keep anyone and anything off us. I can handle the pushing for now.”

  “Hells no!” Haliden replied. “I run with you.”

  Gremin grabbed his arm. “Men will need killing if we’re to get inside. You’d leave that to a child?”

  Haliden looked at Jonathan and reluctantly shook his head.

  “Then go, artist. Paint us your masterpiece. In blood.”

  The three new refugees sat silent in the wagon beside Denelby and Decker, watching Haliden through the torn hide.

  “What’s happening?” the red-headed girl asked.

  “Just stay put,” Haliden told her. He raised the bow and scanned the tunnel. They were more than halfway to the Maw, but debris blocked them in on both sides.

  And then there was the Breath. It was close enough that much of the rear tunnel was on fire. Wooden beams cracked and fell as hundreds of refugees made a final push through Beggar’s Gate.

  “Hurry!” Haliden shouted at Evetner. “It’s right behind us!”

  Gremin glanced over his shoulder. Men and women were crashing through the debris, many screaming and crying as their clothes and hair burst into flames.

  At the Maw, a line of guards blocked the way, slashing and stabbing anyone who tried to pass.

  Gremin leaned into the rear wagon, his adreena infused muscles throbbing as he pushed.

  Haliden ran alongside him, watching the dyran as they climbed the eastern portion of the Block. Their claws tore massive grooves into its charred, granite face, knocking house-sized chunks to the ground.

  “Artist!” Gremin cried. “Above the gate!”

  Haliden turned toward the Maw. Two guards were climbing a ladder beside it.

  “Where in the hells are they…?” But then he realized.

  The counterbalance!

  Haliden quickly raised the bow. But by the time the scope locked on them, both men had vanished behind a piece of low-hanging steel.

  “If they shut that door we’re all dead men!” Gremin cried.

  Desperate, Haliden grabbed the last Tritan arrow and sighted on where he guessed they might be.

  Hold… Hold… Hold…

  Exhaling, he let loose.

  Moments later, two men tumbled to the ground, one clutching his chest.

  Haliden lowered the scope. The arrow would still be traveling, burrowing through the Block’s granite and cement walls. If he’d had eyes on it, he would have seen it cut across a stairwell, slicing a surprised woman’s cheek before puncturing a guard’s stomach and passing into an adjacent store room. He would have then seen it cut through several water barrels, until finally punching through the outer wall and skidding to a slow stop aboard a bobbing cog anchored a thousand yards off shore.

  Gremin looked at him and smiled. “Good fucking shot, Stroke!”

  Haliden squinted as the fire illuminated every facet of the tunnel. It was as if the sun itself were rising directly behind them. His clothing began to char and crisp, and what remained of his hair curled and fell away. Even the punchers cowered before light, whimpering as they hid deeper inside the wagons.

  “Get ready to get off!” Evetner shouted.

  Up ahead, the Maw had become a bottleneck. Some of the refugees trickled past the guards, but most kept back, unwilling to be skewered at the end of a sword.

  “We’re runners!” Gremin shouted. “We request sanctuary for our venermin!”

  Some of the refugees stepped aside. But many more ignored them or deliberately blocked their path.

  “We have two venermin!” Gremin shouted again. “Runner’s rights! Let us pass!”

  Guards lay bloodied on the ground, crushed and torn by the mob. Some pleaded for mercy as the wagons rolled past, but they kept going.

  “It’s all falling apart!” Haliden shouted.

  “Fuck it, then! Run through ’em!”

  Haliden glanced at the trapper. “Are you mad?”

  “We came all this way, boy! I won’t die in sight of it!”

  Evetner drew his sword and braced himself between a pair of crates. The brothers sat huddled beside the excited punchers, staring wide eyed at the Breath’s growing light.

  A blast of superheated air exploded down the tunnel.

  “Down!” Haliden shouted.

  A huge section of the tunnel collapsed behind them, molten steel and flame exploding in every direction like a wave.

  A man jumped onto the right side of the wagon, his face burnt and bloody.

  Evetner raised his father’s sword and swung at the man’s chest. But the refugee jumped back, dodging the blow. As Evetner recovered, the man raised a rusty dagger and lunged forward. Evetner was quicker, though, and hacked off the man’s arm.

  Dark, arterial blood p
ulsed from the man’s stump, splashing across the wagon floor. But he rushed forward anyway and punched Eventer in the face.

  Haliden scrambled onto the wagon. But before he could do anything, the man spun around and kicked him in the chest.

  Haliden gasped, the wind knocked from his lungs. He tried to move, but the man tossed him onto the floor.

  “See you on the other side, runner,” he growled as he stepped on Haliden’s throat.

  Haliden clumsily clawed at the man’s filthy boot, black spots blossoming before his eyes.

  Not… like… this! He was about to lose consciousness when the man suddenly trembled violently.

  “What the…” He staggered backward, staring at something sticking out of his chest.

  “Bastards,” he slurred as he touched the tip of a massive crossbow bolt. He then collapsed over the side of the wagon.

  Flames exploded above them as another section of tunnel splashed down in a wave of sparks.

  Evetner picked Haliden up and handed him the bow.

  “Let’s go!”

  Gremin leaned into the wagon, muttering curses as Haliden dropped down beside him.

  “What the fuck are you doing, artist?” he shouted. “You’re supposed to be clearing our path!”

  “With what? An empty quiver?”

  A hundred yards ahead, the inner sanctum was chaos, a dense tangle of screaming humanity crashing against itself like a trapped wave. Two staircases lined either side of the vast room, forbidding steel doors partially ajar atop each. But the runners would have to clear a path through the crowd if they ever hoped to reach them.

  “Close the bloody gate!” someone screamed. “It’s too close!”

  Gremin glanced at Haliden. “Forget the wagons—we have to go!” He tore the hide open. “Boys! Out! Out!”

  Jonathan and Brandon jumped off the wagon, followed by the punchers. The two girls kissed their father’s still face and joined them.

  “What now?” Evetner cried.

  “I’m not just leaving everything to burn,” Haliden said. He pointed to one of the stairwells. “I’ll get help.”

  “You do that, artist. Me and the boy here will get this group inside.”

  Haliden nodded. “This is goodbye then.”

  Evetner nodded. “Good luck, Stroke.”

  Haliden knelt down before the brothers. “Stay close to him. He’ll keep you safe.”

  Both boys nodded, their faces pale and streaked with tears.