Ecko Rising (32 page)

Water. Dripping, annoying, cold.

His hand lashed out. There was a feminine squeak and a bark of laughter.

Spitting, he sat up.

He was crumpled at the base of a grassy bank – the air was cooling, there was fire-warmth to one side. Crouched by him was one of the grunts, a small, dark-haired woman with a sunburned nose. His first thought:
she’s cute
. His second: what the hell was he doing down here?

For no apparent reason, his head was full of fire. Chrissakes, had he been dreaming, already?

A couple of the goons stood over them, grinning. One of them shoved a wooden bowl of glop at him. When he tried to move, every muscle shrieked protest and he sat back with a stifled groan.

The girl smiled. “You’re sun-touched. You’ve stopped sweating. Here.” She passed him a waterskin. “There’s salt in the food – you’ll need it.”

His mind was struggling with the concept of dreaming – a dream within the program, that was fucked up. He shook his head, flicked through ocular modes, squinted skywards to see threads of cloud through the gathering dusk. He felt like shit.

“How the hell do you know what I need?”

She blinked, withdrew. “I’m Tarvi, I look after the health of these idiots. Pareus, our tan, you know, the rest of them –”

“Don’t bother.” He sat up this time, took three mouthfuls of lukewarm water and started on the glop with a grimace.

Determined to be friendly, she smiled at him. Her voice sparkled. “We’ll head back to the city at the end of our patrol, take you to Larred Jade.”

Round a mouthful of food, he said, “Great.”

“Don’t you want to know what we’re doing?” She was bugging him, completely unfazed by his skin, his eyes, his teeth. Her hair shone with red highlights in the setting sun.

And he had
no
fucking clue why he’d just noticed that. He scalded his lips on another tasteless mouthful and turned away.

Around him was a small, flat campsite, defended by a low bank. The squad had put up a lean-to and a scatter of tents, though most of them were gathered with the critters at one corner. As Ecko glanced, one of them threw a bucket of slop water over his mate.

“We’re making good time,” Tarvi said. Greatly daring, she brushed her fingertips over the back of his hand. “Doesn’t that hurt?” His skin shone at her touch.

He snarled at her. “Yeah, I’m a freakshow.”

Not waiting for her hurt expression, he stretched, heard his joints pop and crackle. He felt like he’d been kicked round Wembley fucking Stadium. Picking up glop and waterskin, he shambled over to the fire.

Fire. He’d been dreaming about fire. Detonation. Power...

“You’ll need this, mate!” Another goon threw a heavy, fabric roll across to him – a bedroll of some sort. He caught it without thinking. “Get your basher up, it’s gonna piss. And tomorrow? You do your own damned chearl!”

Do what with it?
Ecko finished the glop, feeling the firelight warm on his face – then, rebelliously, pushed the bowl into the flames. For a moment, it lay there as they worried at it, bubbling, blackening – then it suddenly caught, roaring into fierce life. Bright flame shot skywards, heat slammed into him. The fire was his friend, his security – he understood it and he welcomed it. In London, he’d made his name with it, beaten Pilgrim with it, made them remember that they didn’t own the city...

For a second, a fragment of the dream came back to him – the last run he’d done, the one that’d gotten him the info on Grey. How it felt to be that powerful, to have that much skill at his fingertips...

Not like now, stuck out here weaponless and eating mulch, without even a fucking sleeping bag that he actually understood...

He watched the flames, trying to reach for more images, a fragment of home, something familiar. He almost felt like London was waning, getting less real as the plainland around him got more so.

Over him, the sky faded to grey, to deep blue, and at last to silver-accented night. Tarvi was still beside him.

The air became cold. He unrolled the strange bedding, pulled it round his shoulders. He missed London, Lugan; he missed the Bard. Hell, right now, he missed his fucking mom.

Both of them.

Over him, the moons shone insanity – one, silver body swollen, far too low and far too big, lit the plainland to alien freakishness. The other was a crescent, a golden fingernail. Above them, the black sky was completely devoid of stars.

The night noises were all-the-fuck wrong.

“What the hell am I doing out here?” He didn’t even realise he’d said it aloud until Tarvi turned to look at him, face warmed by the fire.

“Huh?”

He didn’t meet her gaze. “Out here. It’s all fucking wrong. Why don’t’cha have any stars?”

“They were cast down by Samiel, Godsfather.” In the night’s stillness, Tarvi’s voice was perfectly serious. “All except one.”

“How fucking literary.” He chuckled. “That’s right up there with your moons being gods, for chrissakes.”

“Of course the moons are Gods.” She laughed at him. “They’re brother and sister. The sagas say they committed a... ah... terrible indiscretion and they gaze in yearning upon one another, only to know it can never be, and so they turn away.”

Faced with her sincerity, her soft skin in the firelight, he lost the ability to be scathing.

“Impossible – and incestuous,” he said. Something about it made him grin. He glanced sideways at her, head tilted. “How’d you know that?”

“I read?” She shrugged. “The yellow moon is named for Samiel’s daughter Calarinde, she who not only tempted her brother, but also lay with the last of the stars – causing him, too, to be cast down. Yet because his crime was one of love, he was condemned only to loneliness – he was sent here, as our guardian and champion. Tales say he walks the mortal world to this day.”

He walks the mortal world...

“Yeah.” Ecko tucked the bedroll closer round his shoulders. “That guy. I gotta bone to pick with him.”

The fire was warm on his face and it left its colours in his skin. He didn’t speak again.

* * *

Ecko watched Tarvi watching the ruin.

She was small, round faced and round figured, though her fitness pressed tight muscle against the fabric of her garments. Her days on the trade-road had sunburned her nose, she scratched at loose skin at its edges.

Her hair was haphazardly tied back, though wisps escaped the leather band and drifted constantly into her face. She blew at them, stirring ash. Ecko stifled a sudden urge to push them back.

You can’t go there and you know it!

Flanking her, the two spearmen were sharp-eyed, covering her back and each other’s.

They ducked beside a wall. Tarvi slipped along its length to peer out...

...and stopped dead, hands gesturing.

Low to the ground, he raced rodent swift to stand almost behind her, crouched upon a fallen crossbeam.

Before them was a small and blasted square, flagstones cracked, buildings seared and crumbling to every side. It was close to the heart of the explosion and even the stone had melted. The ground was still hot, colours spiralled lazily into the darkening air.

Who could do this – what the hell had this kind of power?

On the far side of the square, there was motion.

On a crumbling upper floor, inside a black-edged window. Tarvi held her spear and waited. Ecko hugged what remained of the building sides, slipping round the edges of the destruction.

His telescopics spun, found nothing, spun again. Whatever it was, it was below the level of the windowledge. Blinking, he flicked back to his heatseeker but the thermals of the square defeated him.

He reached the base of the building.

Behind him, Tarvi hadn’t moved. She and the spearmen were crouched in the partial cover of the wall. She was flicking gestures at Pareus. Ecko saw the commander call the patrol to his side. Keeping to cover, they moved to the edge of the square.

Ecko touched his fingertips to the wall.

It was shaking – just enough for his sensitive touch to detect. Its foundations fucked, it was coming down – and whatever was up there was coming down with it.

Hell, he’d take that chance. He’d have to watch his ass – the wall was covered in ash and shit and if he failed to grip, he could bring it down on top of himself...

...but it would be so fucking cool – and she was
right there.

With the ubiquitous prayer to the Bogeyman, he went up the wall.

* * *

Pareus skidded to a crouch beside where Tarvi waited.

“Movement,” she said. “Second window from the left. Whatever it was, I haven’t seen it again.”

“You’re sure?”

“There’s something up there.”

“Where’s Ecko?”

Her eloquent shrug made him snort – whatever that Ecko creature was, it was a royal pain in the arse. Skilled, doubtless, but he’d seen Banned with more discipline. Why the rhez he’d been landed with this...

Not the time.

His guys were young, but they knew the drill – they spread out to watch the area.

Pareus crouched with Tarvi, sword bared.

Then, shocking across the burned-out silence, he heard a sky-ripping, high-pitched shriek – a crumble of damaged stonework, a skittering of many claws...

...and a full-throated male scream.

He turned in time to see Rift go down under a mass of slither, a dull gleam of sunset from scales, a grey puff of ash cloud, a shredding of claws and teeth. The spearman scrabbled for a hopeless second – trying to fight a seething mass of them off him – then he tumbled, screaming, thrashing, to the broken stone floor, the flesh literally being stripped from his bones. Charcoaled wood shattered, dark fluid exploded up the wall as he simply vanished, ripped into pieces, flesh from bone.

Tarvi was on her feet, hands over her mouth. Her face white to the lips.

And the ripple of death came onwards.

Magharta. A whole nest of them.

“To me!” he called. They needed no urging, the nine remaining members of his tan were already moving, scrambling over obstacles to where he stood. They reached him in a jostle, wild-eyed and ash blackened – they stank of fear.

But they held shoulder to shoulder, facing out.

The magharta had momentarily paused. Each one was barely the size of his hand, but there was a teeming mass of them, all snarling and tearing at Rift’s shredded remains. Bones rattled against the stonework. Now they came on, undulating like water, flowing over the intervening debris.

They were claws, scrabbling at broken timbers. They were teeth, bared and stained with the flesh of the spearman.

Tarvi was whispering, “Oh my Gods oh my Gods oh my Gods...”

Pareus slapped her in the face.

She blinked at him for a second, staring almost straight through him, then began to breathe again, heavily as if she were about to throw up.

Pareus snapped sharply at her, “Don’t lose it now!”

The magharta came on, swift and implacable. They grinned eyeless like figments, their faces were knife-toothed grins.

Edge shot one shaft, two. He pinned the lead creature, and its companions immediately turned on it, gleefully tearing into its flesh. As they paused, he shot another, and a fourth.

He was starting to panic.

Pareus watched, horrified, as frenzy ensued. The creatures became a roiling knot of scales and sinew and teeth and claws. They screamed as they tore into each other, sky-splitting shrieks that set teeth on edge and made the patrol want to cower, block their ears.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Edge muttered. He was loosing so fast his shafts were going wide, clattering among the wreckage.

“Enough.” Pareus stopped him, hand on his arm. “You’re wasting them – you’ll never make a difference.”

“What do we do?” Edge’s voice was high with terror. “Rift didn’t even
see
them! We should run – !”

“We’d never make it – not over this ground.”

“Wait,” Tarvi said. She was white faced; her hands shook. “Cover me.”

Pareus gave a sharp nod.

Whatever she was doing – it’d better be fast.

* * *

Ecko heard the inhuman screech, heard the ripping death of the spearman.

Halfway up the wall, hung there like a fucking ornament, he craned back over his own cloaked shoulder to see a running carpet of fang-toothed beasties converging on the terrified patrol.

Behind them, they left the shredded and scattered remains of the poor fucker they’d hit. Some of them were still eating him.

Scrabbling haphazardly down the wall-side, he felt the masonry judder as he moved his weight, but he wasn’t going to hang the fuck about. His feet hit the floor and he was running across the square, stealth-cloak flapping gracelessly behind him.

He heard the wall groan.

And he ran.

It collapsed with a rumble. There was a wash of ash, an exhalation of dust; the ground shook as the wall fell. Ecko kept his feet and didn’t look back.

He saw the archer – loosing hopeless, panicked shots into the midst of a spiralling ouroboros of tearing, ripping creatures, saw him hold his fire as if they stood on the Thin Red fucking Line.

He saw the critters uncurl themselves; turn back to the patrol.

Then he realised what the wall had been hiding...

...as another almighty seethe of them came out the building, and over the crashed masonry at his heels.

* * *

They had time.

Under Pareus’s sharp, steady command, the tan held together. As the magharta feasted on each other, the patrol threw together a barricade – bricks, beams, anything heavy they could drag.

Crouched behind the makeshift, flame-blackened wall, Tarvi threw bags and vials out of her apothecary’s kit.

“I don’t have much,” she said, “but it’s pretty savage.” As the wall grew higher, she scattered drops of liquid over the top – liquid that crystallised on contact with the air.

When the pouch was empty, she drew her belt-blade with a rasp and came to stand by Pareus.