Loe raamatut: «Shade’s Children»

CHAPTER TWO

There was no time for discussion at the top of the embankment. Gold-Eye was pulled up and over the edge, without apparent effort, by an extremely large, heavily muscled man. Or perhaps a boy – for his face was round and hairless, totally at odds with his mammoth physique.

The other two were women – or rather a young woman and a girl. It took a second for Gold-Eye to realise they were female, since all three of his rescuers had close-cropped hair and wore baggy green coveralls cinched at the waist with wide leather belts festooned with pouches and equipment. Long, broad-bladed swords hung in scabbards at their hips and they all wore heavy black boots.

They looked organised and Gold-Eye felt suddenly alien in his strange collection of mismatched clothing, with his matted hair showing the dirt of many weeks. He hadn’t really been clean since the harsh washing rituals of the Dorms.

“Come on!” shouted the woman, grabbing him by the shoulder and starting to run. Gold-Eye stiffened, resisting, then lurched forward as the strong man almost picked him up by one arm. It was either run or have his arm ripped off.

“I run!” blurted Gold-Eye, picking up the pace. Immediately the others released him and he almost fell again before matching their stride.

“I’m Ella,” said the woman, speaking in short bursts as they ran. “That’s Drum.”

“And I’m Ninde.”

The girl was small, maybe only as old as Gold-Eye. Fifteen or thereabouts. Ella was much older, older than anyone Gold-Eye had ever seen, except in pictures. She looked as old as the women on the posters that were slowly peeling off the walls and billboards around the city.

Drum was harder to place, with a face as young as Gold-Eye’s on a body that was easily twice as massive. And he hadn’t said a word.

“The lane!” Ella called out, and the four of them suddenly changed direction, plunging down steps into a narrow alley where the fog lay even thicker, soaking up the light.

Halfway along they stopped so suddenly that Gold-Eye would have crashed into Ninde if Drum hadn’t held him with one enormous hand.

“Ninde?” asked Ella, her breath making the fog eddy around her face.

Ninde closed her eyes and her forehead wrinkled. A second later she started chewing slowly on the knuckle of her forefinger, then more quickly, till Gold-Eye thought she was actually going to break the flesh.

“There are Trackers in Rose Street.” Eyes still closed, she mumbled the words out over her knuckle. “But they have no orders. There is a Winger above the fog, taking messages west. I can’t hear anything else thinking clearly.”

“Thanks,” said Ella. “We’ll take a quick rest before moving on.”

She looked at Gold-Eye properly then and her expression changed, the way it always did when anyone saw his eyes. They weren’t normal human eyes at all, blue or brown or green irises against the white. His pupils and irises were gold, bright gold – and he knew this meant that these people would leave him right away. Or worse…

“Interesting eyes,” Ella said calmly. “Shade will want to see you! Must have been born right at the time of the Change. What’s your name?”

Gold-Eye frowned. He hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time, or even thought in words. But at least she hadn’t hit him or tried to poke his eyes out with a knife, the way other people had.

“Come on,” said the one called Ninde. “Out with it.”

Gold-Eye looked at her, startled. All these questions made it hard for him.

“Your name,” explained Ella, talking more slowly. “Tell us your name.”

“Gold-Eye,” he muttered. There had been another name in the Dormitory, but no one had ever used it. He pointed at his eyes. “Gold-Eye. Because gold eyes.”

“Makes sense,” said Ninde. “I wonder what Ninde means? I’ll have to ask Shade.”

“Enough chat,” said Ella. “Let’s move. We’ll take the Ten West Tunnel at the back of Nancel Street.”

“Have we got time?”

Ninde’s eyes flicked up anxiously, as if to pierce the fog. Gold-Eye knew that look, the calculation of how long it would be till darkness. But the fog hid the sun, so there was no way of knowing when the Trackers and Myrmidons would go in and the Ferrets emerge from their dormant day…

Ella glanced at something metallic on her wrist. A watch, Gold-Eye suddenly remembered, long-ago classes in the Dorm coming back to him. Big hand for hours, little for minutes – or the easy ones just with numbers.

The big man – Drum – was also looking at his watch. He nodded but made a sign with his hand, large fingers scrabbling like a spider over broken ground.

“Just enough, if we hurry,” translated Ninde. “Come on, Gold-Eye!”

Then they were off again, jogging rather than running, emerging on to the road, keeping to the middle between the lines of stopped cars. The fog seemed to run with them, layers breaking and reforming, twining in and around the cars, around their legs and pumping arms.

At a crossroad, the fog gained colour from the traffic lights, one of the few sets Gold-Eye had seen that still worked, inexorably changing from red to green to amber and back to red again above the silent cars.

As the lights turned green, washing the fog and their faces with sickly colour, Ella froze. The others stopped too, except for Gold-Eye, whose momentum carried him an extra step. His footfall sounded loud in the sudden silence.

“What?” he whispered. Ninde covered his mouth with her hand and he could say no more, struck by the strangeness of someone else’s skin against his mouth. Her hand smelled of soap…

Then the lights flashed amber and Ella suddenly leaped forward, with Drum close behind her, their swords out, now streaking lines of red through the mists. Gold-Eye saw their reflections multiplied in the glass windows of the cars… many glaring red Ellas… many scarlet Drums… and then he saw the Trackers who were crouched behind a loaded truck.

“Shaaaaaaaade!” screamed Ella, and then she was standing over the lead Tracker and the blade screamed too as it cut through the air and into the Tracker’s neck, shearing through leather gorget and the gold service braids of a Senior Tracker.

It crumpled, head half off, but the bulbous eyes still stared, still followed Ella, as if even now it would report her to some Myrmidon Master or Overlord.

Gold-Eye stared too, unable to believe what he was seeing. People attacking creatures? You fought when you had to and tried to escape, but you never won.

Movement caught his eye again and he wished it hadn’t, as Drum’s sword came down and a Tracker’s head flew through the air and bounced off a car roof. The headless body staggered back and started to crawl away, feeling the ground with pallid, spider-like fingers.

Drum ignored it. Swivelling on his left heel, he cut the remaining Tracker down with his sword. It crumpled where it fell and bright-blue fluid, too thick to be blood, bubbled out from the stump of its neck.

Then it was all over – and the traffic lights turned green again.

“An old one,” said Ninde conversationally, removing her hand from Gold-Eye’s mouth. “They can go for hours without a head when they’re fresh. Mind you, they only crawl home – and I bet they don’t get fixed up. Just used for spare bits and pieces…”

“Ninde!” shouted Ella, striding back, cleaning her sword at the same time with a strip of cloth. “Bring Gold-Eye! There’ll be Myrmidons here any minute.”

Gold-Eye didn’t need urging, but as they started down the street again, he stopped and jammed his heels into the tar. Suddenly he saw Myrmidons. Two full maniples of them, all clad in deep-blue armour, a Myrmidon Master at their head. The Master was taller than the others, and his armour had spikes and ripples that moved over his shoulders and arms…

Ninde tugged at Gold-Eye’s hand and the vision faded.

“No!” he yelped as she dragged at him, using his free hand to point ahead. “Myrmidons!”

“There’s no one there!” exclaimed Ella, looking back angrily. “Drum…”

“There will be!” Gold-Eye spat urgently as Drum advanced on him. “I see them in the soon-to-be-now.”

“You what?” exclaimed Ella. “Damn. OK, Ninde, see if you can pick anything up.”

Ninde let go of Gold-Eye and started sucking on a knuckle. But this time her eyes flashed open in fright and she let go immediately.

“Two maniples… and a Master. They’re already on Nance Street. The Master knows we’re – ahh – look!”

The detached head of the Tracker was still staring at them. Its long tongue came out and lashed the road, slowly manoeuvring around so its bulbous eyes would have a better view.

“It has a mind-call,” said Ninde, sucking back on her knuckle. “A new one, stuck in its head, not the sort on the neck-chain.”

“Right!” called Ella, her voice much calmer than Ninde’s. “Follow me! Drum, take care of that!”

Drum nodded and broke into a trot down the street. As he passed the head, he expertly kicked it up and away over the line of cars, not bothering to look to see where it went.

A second later Ella overtook him and suddenly turned left into a much narrower road, where there were few cars and little room between them and the tall buildings on either side.

They were about a block away before they heard the massed roar of the Myrmidons and the frightened bleating of more Trackers.

Another block later, after more twists and turns, Ella stopped to try the door in a relatively small building – only five floors high, not breaking through the fog into the sun like the others around it.

The door opened and she led them into a chill, dark foyer. Ninde and Gold-Eye stumbled in; then Drum closed the door, shutting out the fog and the distant noise of the Overlord’s hunting creatures.

“Rest for a few minutes,” ordered Ella. “Then we’d better figure out how to get back home. I guess it’s too late for the Ten West Tunnel – and Nine West is too dry.”

“Ferrets will be stirring now.”

The voice was so high and whispery that it took Gold-Eye a second to realise it was Drum who had spoken.

“Yeah,” answered Ella. “I think we’d better hole up here for the night. But not on the ground level. Let’s find the stairs.”

She reached into one of the belt’s pouches and drew out a round ball smaller than her fist. She squeezed the ball and it suddenly shed a soft, golden light.

Myrmidon witchlight, thought Gold-Eye. On the extremely rare occasions that Myrmidons walked after dusk, they carried tree branches hung with small globes. Myrmidons must have died for Ella to hold that light…

His amazement must have shown, for Ella came and stood over him, the light held high in her hand. Tall and dangerous she looked, her stubbled blonde scalp gleaming in the light. Gold-Eye felt an almost overpowering urge to bow, as he had done on the Sad Birthdays at the Dorm, when the Overlords came…

“Yeah, we killed a Myrmidon,” Ella said softly, and there was a light in her eyes that was no reflection. “Drum held it, just for a moment, and I—”

“Ella,” interrupted the strange, reedy voice of Drum. “He is only a youngster…”

“That’s all any of us are,” Ella said, but the light was gone from her eyes and with it the sudden fear that had come over Gold-Eye. He realised then that he’d ducked his head. Hiding his eyes from the knife, or the hot wire…

“Myrmidons can be killed,” Ella continued. “So can Ferrets, and Wingers. And Trackers. As you have seen.”

“And Overlords?” whispered Gold-Eye, looking up again. This time is was Ella who lowered her eyes.

“One day…” She said. “We will find out. But now let’s find the stairs.”

“I’ve found them,” called Ninde from one of the dark corners. “The fire escape, anyway. But the door’s locked.”

“Ninde!” exclaimed Ella, moving quickly to the door, the witchlight held high. “I’ve told you a hundred times. There could be a Ferret…”

“There will be many in a few minutes,” whispered Drum, moving his bulk between Ninde and Ella to grip the handle of the fire door. He didn’t try to force it, but just ran his hand over it as if feeling the smoothness of the metal. There was a click from inside the door and it swung open.

Far away across the city, a fire alarm sounded in a security company’s control centre. No humans were there to see it, but a vaguely human thing sat in the master chair, watching the panels. It noted the address, then used the device around its neck to notify its master.