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A group of four watchmen dared the open ground just outside the city walls. They raced for Captain Tankready, grabbed him and pulled him towards the city as fast as they could.
Swift Turned, multi-legged and sleek, were upon them in seconds but bowmen on the battlements pushed them back.
Discouraged they formed a group then, when the men had made it safely inside the walls, one after another they hurled themselves up and over and came after them from above.
“Get to them, Smidge’,” I ordered, and he hefted up his mace and went looking for trouble.
More Turned entered the city that way until it became impossible to know where to face and fight as they were behind, in front and to the sides of us all at once.
Civilians ran and screamed. They got between us and the monsters.
MarTaiburn, the Turned Tankready had fought himself free from, was dragged through a breech in the southern wall for she was too badly broken to move herself. She wanted retribution and all her eyes moved this way and that in desperate search of the Captain.
I think it was Bannin’s voice calling for breaches to be sealed and for the stones to be rolled out and I echoed them. Then, in the ensuing confusion, I broke away, sidled off on my own mission.
I saw watchmen in elevated positions as I tore off down neglected alleyways.
I didn’t count many, fifteen, twenty maximum. One stood on a rooftop, two along a Quarter dividing wall whilst some more dotted the great wall that surrounded the whole city, kept it separate from the wilds of the world. They were firing at Turned, trying to kill them as they flung up over the walls but they were outnumbered for the Turned just kept coming.
Sheriff Bannin lacked the numbers to defend the city and I prayed I would be able to persuade the Neverens to leave Tambroite and fight. If Haven would have none of it I would kill him. I would run him through where he stood protesting. It was time his soldiers defended the city. If they wouldn’t then we would all die. We needed the numbers.
As there was no need for subterfuge I marched straight up to the manor gates. There would’ve been checkpoints to pass through, straw roofed guardhouses intermittently spaced to validate my character and intentions but these houses were abandoned now and I travelled unchallenged. A crow sat on the snowy roof of one. An omen if ever there was.
The gates were east facing and overlooked the parade ground and business end of the manor complex. There wasn’t a soul around so I climbed to the top and vaulted over into the courtyard beyond and my boots ‘putted’ quietly as I landed.
A quick check to make sure I still hadn’t been seen and I started across the parade ground. Fast at first, then gradually I slowed down. It was so quiet here. Was I really alone?
Another crow cawed and landed not far from me. I picked up a stone, pinched an eye shut and took aim, then the gate I’d vaulted over moments before suddenly banged open.
My heart racing, my head pounding, I whirled round and cursed him. “You idiot. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to help you.” Smidgen smiled at me as he spoke.
“I told you to stay and help the watch, now get.”
“But I don’t like leaving you alone. Anything could happen to you.”
“Are you deaf? Get going Smidge’ before I throw this at you,” I waved the stone.
“But there could be Turned here. You might need help.”
“If Turned are here they’ll know about me now thanks to your subtle approach of walking right through the gate. I should’ve tied a bell to you then everyone would know where you are the whole bloody time. Get away from me Smidgen. Make yourself useful elsewhere.”
“I helped with The Terrant didn’t I?”
“Yes you did, and I’m grateful. But this I do alone. This mission requires subtly and finesse, two qualities you don’t possess so shoo.”
Reluctantly he turned his back on me and shuffled back through the broken gate.
“Help Bannin repel the Turned. Go back to The Fortune of War. See if anyone needs anything lifting or carting around. Must be plenty to do back there.” I don’t know if he heard me but something did the trick for he never came back.
I was alone again, save for that crow, and I took a moment to compose myself. The damn thing was looking at me so I took aim. I hit it with the stone and it flew up and away onto some snow covered rooftops.
“Don’t think I can’t reach you there,” I scowled at it and bent to pick up another stone.
A severed head struck the side of a building and came to a rolling stop before me. It wore the yellow plumed helmet of a sergeant. It was Pulsky, I could tell from the fat lips and narrow eyes. There was a surprised expression on his face, which I mirrored when I realised that it couldn’t have travelled all the way from the battle at the south gate and that evidently I wasn’t alone in the manor grounds after all.
I had to get out of the open and I moved quickly into a passage between two brick buildings. It was narrow here and my coat took on the same colour as the shadows at the bottom of it. Secret eyes could be watching me and there was no point making an obvious target of myself so I would remain hidden for as long as I could. But the manor was dead, wasn’t it? I inched along to the end of the wall and peered out.
I saw precious little. Certainly nothing to get me worried. There were no Turned spinning across the parade ground, no lone person, lost, confused, crisscrossing the cobbles in panic and no Neveren signalling to me with a wave. I was completely alone.
A gentle buzz and I flicked at the air. Damn flies. Flies? I thought it too cold for flies and yet one landed on my hand, another on my arm. A caw from above and I looked up to see a line of three crows perched along the wall of the passage, eyeing me.
It was then that I became aware of a smell of decay and I followed it. The damnable flies became prevalent, moved in large and writhing black clouds and I hit out at them with both hands as I squeezed down the passage. I continued suffering them until I reached the end of the passage where it abutted the side of a bigger building and here there were many flies, hundreds of them, and they feasted on the dead. Red cloaked Neverens to a man.
No one lived in or anywhere near the King’s manor, not anymore. The massacred bodies, our last hope for help, were coloured black and purple, distended with death gases, twisted and broken. Roses were hard trained, were elites in the world of soldiery, had years of fighting experience before they retired as Roses and yet they were all dead.
I felt sick to the stomach and the damn flies didn’t help. Crawling up my nose, going into my mouth whenever I gasped, bouncing off my head and ears.
I felt angry now too. It was such an inglorious end to the Neverens and they deserved better.
Something small, no taller than my lower leg, moved to my side and I immediately recalled the imp-Turned that had attempted to steal the bag from Smidgen late last night. It was gone in the blink of a wary eye and with a fearful deference I realised that whatever had killed the Neverens could still be close by. I looked around without being obvious. Without making a show of checking my surroundings.
It made sense that it’d stayed local for something had remained and was eating the dead soldiers. Flesh stripped bone lay discarded all around. Picked clean and gleaming white in the early wintry sun. And something had spat Pulsky’s swollen head at me.
The weight of wicked eyes bore into me. The back of my head prickled and I knew I was being watched from a distance. The confidence I’d felt only moments earlier when I’d vaulted the gates, evaporated and a cold feeling of terror spread from the crown of my scalp downwards, and every part of my body reacted to the sensation with a shiver.
I couldn’t shake that feeling of being watched and yet a cadged look over my shoulder revealed nothing or no one.
I forced myself to hurry across the parade ground and into a complex of narrow passageways. I took two rights and a left, came out into a kitchen garden hoar frosted and glistening in the pale morning light. I moved stealthily through the garden, leaving shallow prints on the hard snow and wended a path between the beds of dormant vegetables and cane sticks.
There were gates sunk into a brick wall that bordered the garden on three sides. One of them was open and swinging on its hinges and I caught glimpses of the ground beyond. I turned my back to it, walked at pace along the rear stretch of the property until I found a recessed doorway to slip into. Feeling nervous and jittery I plied my pick to the lock. Suspicious fool and for luck only I spat on the pick and the charm worked for the lock gave immediately. I turned the handle clockwise a tenth of a turn and the door started to open and I pressed my face warily to the crack.
“What the..?” I startled and dropped the pick as an imp-Turned rushed out. How many of them were there? I could give chase and splatter it but I’d wasted time panicking and the thing has disappeared in the garden. “Breathe Flendin, breathe,” I ordered, gripping the handle so severely my knuckles whitened. I vowed I wouldn’t be surprised again, pushed at the door and took my first step inside.
The air tasted foul, sickly and humid and there were more damn flies. I spat them from my mouth and flicked them irritably from off my face. Every room I passed through had a corpse sprawled gracelessly across the floor, or had many heaped in blood stained corners. Their gaunt blue faces glared back at me, mouths fixed in odd contortions, eyes wide open dry and cracked.
With every shutter closed it was dark, yet sunlight came through cracks in the wood and in awkward places where the shutters didn’t fit the windows properly. Dust motes hovered in the foul air like myriad busy bugs, and shone and glinted where the light bounced off of them. I lowered my hood about my shoulders and stood for a while in quiet contemplation.
Every room hosted death, every wall was smeared with blood, every floor pitted and gouged by death struggle and dread flight.
After time I made myself move through the sticky mess, having no objective save to reach the end of the building and discern, if at all possible, what had happened to these poor people. Neverens, servants and members of the Royal Household had all been murdered in the most horrific way, bodily bisected, beheaded and torn apart.
A Rose had been lifted and pushed into a wall. He was sandwiched in the midriff and his legs and arms protruded out like he was a stand to hang your cape and other outer garments on. His head was downcast so that I couldn’t see his face. I wouldn’t want to see it and I hurried out of that room and came immediately upon a grand hallway.
I’d been here before. The night Captain Jakolbot had brought me to the place, had lead me via secret ways to the topmost room, I’d been at this exact point before. It was here that a mad Turned had torn through the Neveren defences. Perhaps it was that same Turned that had killed everyone here. Unlikely that anything could be made that powerful and yet it was a possibility all the death in and around Tambroite was via the same evil thing.
Large ceterian vases had survived the carnage and stood either side of a marble staircase. Each was as tall as a man, their glaze magnifying what little light stole in, and they sent shafts of gold this way and that.
Sometimes I would break one of those golden shafts as I moved and whenever I did it was like a branch of pure sunlight turned my coat to fire and I continued up, stepping around headless corpses, as I ascended. I would reach the top floor. Gods knew what I would find when I did but I had to reach the top.
Exit point or entry place I would never know but a great stained glass window above the landing was broken and rainbow coloured shards of glass littered both sides of it, inside and out.
Up, up, I went as far up as the stairs could take me. Sometimes there was light and sometimes there wasn’t and my eyes grew accustomed to the eerie dappled world.
At the top of the stairs there was a narrow hall at the end of which stood, well I wasn’t sure what.
It was fashioned from bronze or some other similar metal and, though bigger than a man, its shape was akin to one. It was broad across the shoulders, had a square box for a head and thick, solid girders for legs.
Was it alive or dead? Gingerly I inched closer. Was it this that had killed the Neverens?
It was an inert creation for not once did it move in reaction to me and, now that I was closer, I could see there was a man stood inside the peculiar armour.
I could see glimpses of him through the holes rent in the front of the metal for the Turned that had killed all the Neverens had got to this last man even through the thick exoskeleton of the metal.
“Incredible isn’t it?”
I turned quickly, pulling my sword free and cut it through the air three times ready to battle.
It was Haven. He looked dishevelled, shrunken and pitiful yet he was alive. Alive. He had survived when absolutely no one else had. How could that be? It didn’t stand to reason when there was so much death all around.
I put my sword away. “You live, why?” I growled. I didn’t doubt it was Haven’s cowardice that had got all the Neverens killed.
Haven raised his curved walking stick in the metal mans direction, saying, “Because of his bravery. Because of the bravery of all the Neverens.”
“How could they all die?” I thought Neverens trained hard. I thought them the best, I thought them elite.
“Because they battled something better than them. They fought a Turned honed for destruction. But just when I thought my heart couldn’t break any further, that my guilt for what has transpired here couldn’t feel any worse, you return to the city. Where is the King, Flendin the Blade?”
“Safe,” I said. I didn’t like his angry tone. Who was he to be angry with me, after all I’d been through?
“In the city?”
“Yes.” He was strapped to Smidgen. He was in the safest place I could think of.
“Then you have failed me.” Haven raised that curved stick of his and his face flushed pink with exertion. He pulled an arm back and hefted it towards me with a heartfelt groan. It clattered off the walls as it spun down the hall and I leapt out of its lolloping path just in time. It struck an imp-Turned and, still spinning, returned back up the hall to be caught by the Chancellor. “Finish it,” he instructed.
I pricked the imp with my sword, delivering a fatal cut and it twitched once and died.
“You were supposed to take the King away from here,” he affirmed righteously, and leant upon his stick like it could carry the weight of all his worry and insecurities and fear.
“I was followed. Wherever I went I was followed. Sooner or later he’d better me.” I justified my actions with the cold logic that luck would have run out on me. Was I being judged? Criticised? I’d done more than any other in my position would’ve, way more. I could’ve tipped the bag on a midden somewhere, anywhere, and strolled off without a care for the fate of the world. Someone like me would survive whatever the outcome. But I had a developing conscience I was convinced had been imprinted on me by Smidgen and his do-gooder ways. “We have to fight him. We have to kill him. I’m leading him back here so that we can achieve that very aim.”
“Very admirable but fight him with what?” Haven began hobbling towards me. I knew it hurt him to move for I registered the pain in his old face. These past few weeks had tested his old bones to the limit. He huffed and puffed a lot and, a sticks width away from me finally drew to a halt and breathed easy. “Look around you thief, there’s no one left alive to fight.”
Haven tapped the metal man with his stick and a metallic ring sounded. In this cursed vacuum of death it was a pleasant noise I thought for it sounded pure like the peel of the Neverens bell. “Look closer at this. It’s called a peridoe,” said the Chancellor sucking spit back up his trembling lip. “It’s a prototype and is designed to make a soldier impervious to any attack. A Neveren is shut inside the metal case. He can move around though his gait is slow, gradual. It is the ultimate armour. Look at the holes in the chest and head of the contraption.”
I did. Something had forced entry in both places. Dried blood reddened the rim of the holes for the Rose inside had been punctured in two fatal places.
Haven’s voice adopted a dark and menacing tone, “I saw the Turned when it attacked our peridoe,” he said and I couldn’t take my eyes from off the last of the Neverens.
“It punched through the metal with its fists. With its fists,” he astonished.
That sounded familiar. “What did it look like, this Turned?” My curiosity had been roused. I knew what I didn’t want to hear and when I heard it anyway I felt the life drain from my face. I swooned, felt for a wall to steady myself with and held my eyes shut tight. It had to be, didn’t it? It just had to be.
“It was garbed in black,” said Haven. “And moved with incredible speed. I could sense the evil emanating from it. It looked at me and yet let me live. It was a crooked thing. It looked bent.”
“It looked bent,” I mirrored the exact words. Bent had killed the Neverens. He had wiped them out. I felt wretched. I felt giddy and the room moved without me taking a single step. How could he kill these good men? And how could such a thing be stopped?
“What is it thief? You look different. It is as if the life has drained from your face. Have you met this Turned before? Speak to me.”
“This Turned,” I said brokenly. “This Turned works with me now.” Oh the shame of it. I’d travelled these weeks with a mass murderer. I’d known he was capable of atrocities but standing knee deep amongst the dead hit the truth home harder than anything else could ever do.
He’d punched right through the metal, killed the last of the Neverens as they’d fought desperately to protect the Chancellor. He couldn’t even have left one alive. But why had Bent spared the Chancellor?
“Then it must atone for what it has done here. It must fight Hunger and kill him.”
“I don’t know that he will do that. I don’t know anything anymore,” I said. “For whenever I think I can trust him he does something to let me down.”