Escana (74 page)

Whether the second man had some
prior knowledge or hold over the leader Jimmy couldn't tell, the
argument seemed to convince him all the same.

'Fine. I don't trust those
fucking sand-dwellers anyway. What would you have us do then, boy?'

'We plan to sneak down into the
bowels of the arena and arm ourselves, then help the guards hunt down
the assassin.'

The man peered outside the door
suspiciously. 'We? Who is we?'

'C-Company are on their way here,
we're going to combine our forces.'

The second man laughed at that.
'You're going to pit a bunch of cripples against a Je'daran assassin?
You didn't see what he did to the guards when he was here before.'

Another voice joined in
excitedly. 'Had the whole guard scrambling to stop him and was one
throw away from killing Dyson himself.'

The first man had heard enough.
'So what fucking chance have the likes of C-Company got against a man
who can handle himself against trained guards?'

'We have to do something!' Jimmy
cried. 'He's going to kill us all if we don't!'

Armand nodded. 'I believe you
kid, we'll team up with your C-Company and get down to the armoury
then see what's what.'

Although he found their presence
intimidating, Jimmy felt buoyed nonetheless. It was preferable by far
to wandering these dangerous corridors alone.

B-Company proved to be much more
methodical and alert than the limping infirmity of their inferiors.
Each man paid as much attention to the sounds around him as Jimmy
would have if he were alone, whether this was born out of distrust
for the other members or just training he couldn't tell. He didn't
dare tell them to halt and wait for C-Company to catch up, now that
they had been given a taste of potential freedom they were eager to
pursue it. It was a strange mixture of determination and desperation
that he hadn't seen in his old company. The older members of
C-Company had seemed to be patiently waiting for the guards to
intervene and lock them back up.

Their progress was markedly
quicker in spite of the patient approach, they met no opposition on
their way to the weapons room and the silence surrounding the fort's
interior was eerie. Jimmy kept expecting to hear the sounds of a
single pair of feet signalling the arrival of the foreigner, then
again a skilled assassin probably didn't make any sound.

They soon arrived at the weapons
room, or the armoury as they jokingly called it. The same tired old
rusted assortment was laid out on the table and mounted on the walls
for their perusal. Looking at some of the spears Jimmy knew that it
wouldn't matter how rusted they were so long as they could still
puncture flesh.

It lurked constantly in the back
of his mind, the thought of the foreigner silently stalking the
corridors and waiting for the opportune moment to strike out at his
next victim. The image of C-Company doddering along at the mercy of
anyone else in the building troubled him.

He need not have worried, a snort
of derision from one of the B-Company members signalled their
arrival. The others refused to acknowledge they existed.

'Well, we made it here in one
piece kid and I see you found B-Company in one piece, now what
happens?' Darinnis asked.

Jimmy hadn't figured out what
they were going to do now, they couldn't exactly walk up to the
guards armed as they were and offer to help. Or was it as simple as
that? With a killer on the loose the remaining guards had much graver
things to worry about than a few men with rusty weapons.

'I neither know nor care what you
fuckers have planned,' Armand replied to the man, even though he was
clearly addressing Jimmy. 'My lads are going to arm ourselves and
wait until the assassin has done our work for us. Then we'll spring
the fucker when he comes to finish us and the fort will be ours.'

As much as Jimmy disliked the
guards and their atrocious treatment of those under them, he still
saw them as human beings with lives of their own. For all their
faults they deserved a better fate than at the hands of the
foreigner.

'If we help the guards we can
prevent any further bloodshed by flushing out the assassin before he
strikes again.' He knew how idealistic and naïve the words
sounded as they left his mouth, a man like Armand wasn't going to
believe them.

'We could do that. What happens
after he's dead though? Do you think the guards are going to treat us
nicely for breaking into the weapons room and arming ourselves
without them knowing?'

He had a point, Jimmy stuttered
in an attempt to find a counter-argument but his head came up blank.
He knew that the practicality of what the man was planning to do was
wrong, he just couldn't think of anything to dissuade him.

'Everyone got their weapons
handy?' A chorus of assent. 'Right then, let's move back out to our
room and wait for this fucker to come pay us a visit, out of our
way.'

He brushed past Jimmy as if he
wasn't there, none of C-Company made a move to stop him and with good
reason. Armand was purposeful and loud and seemed to strike fear into
those that weren't part of his group. Jimmy wondered what happened to
that brashness when he encountered the handful of A-Company members
dotted about the fort.

As he watched the men file out of
the room leaving him alone with C-Company, Jimmy's thoughts turned to
Jakob for the first time since his father had taken him away. He
violently shoved it back down out of necessity, he knew he couldn't
allow himself to think or feel anything unimportant in a time of
crisis. Instead he silently observed the men in the room with him
picking over the remaining weapons, a sorry collection for a sorry
group.

He shook his head, why was he
thinking like that bully Armand? Perhaps these men were no fighters
but that did not invalidate their humanity. He joined them and
selected a blunt-looking dagger for himself, though he couldn't
imagine what use it would serve against a trained assassin.

What could they do really? A
group of the crippled and decrepit would be more likely to get in the
way than anything else.

A roar from above caused them to
flinch in despair, they had heard it once before and now they knew
their fate was sealed, the lizard had returned to feast on those who
were left.

Jimmy watched the faces before
him as they came to terms with what they were hearing, it was a
mixture of resignation and fear. His heart pounded in his chest and
signalled exactly what he felt about their imminent death. He was no
hero that had grown accustomed to peril, every time his life had been
threatened his reaction was the same.

If he really was going to die
this time, he was going to at least try to do so on his feet rather
than cowering in a corner with the elderly men.

Gripping the pommel of his sword
tightly and with a wave of inadequacy washing through him, he started
walking away from the safety of the room and toward the noise. All
eyes were on him and he heard the slow shuffling of feet falling in
line behind him as he led them onward to their death in silence.

There was a clarity now that he
was committed, there was no possible turning back now that he was
leading this group of people. Everything intensified, he could hear
the sounds bouncing off the corridor walls and could see things with
a crispness that he had somehow lacked before.

He had expected the walk down the
corridor to be the longest steps of his young life, instead he found
his feet guiding him autonomously and time slipping away at an
inexorable pace. The noises were coming from just inside the main
palisade, though they had died down ominously as they left the
building. He entered the darkness of the night and made his way
across the sand to greet the monster with steel.

'
Y
ou seem
troubled. It has been some time since you last saw me.'

Was it so plainly written on her
face that this woman could tell in an instant? The last few times
they had met had been nothing but small talk of little relevance to
anything. She was beginning to wonder whether Eli's mistress was the
Emperor's advisor or simply a very bored woman in desperate need of
company.

'How could you tell?' she finally
asked, not wanting to seem rude by refusing to answer her host.

'I sense your withdrawal, as if
you've closed yourself away from everyone and everything. It isn't a
healthy mindset dear, it can only lead to suffering. You have a
troubled soul and nobody with which to confide in, I offer you my
unconditional support.'

She watched as the woman topped
off her tea with a sympathetic glance before continuing.

'It can be very difficult up here
in isolation from the rest of our people, we are not seen as equals
and often must suffer the belittlement, unintentional or otherwise,
of the intellectual elites. If you are not a strong individual you
will be seen as a tool, to use and to control.'

Control. It was as if the word
unlocked the barriers inside Ella's mind that she had purposefully
placed to shield herself from the worst of El-Vador over these last
few days. He had been controlling, manipulative and savage, the
antithesis of what he masqueraded as initially. There was nobody to
turn to and no law of the land that he appeared to be breaking, she
could not march up to the Emperor and demand he do something about
the most powerful force in his Empire simply because it
inconvenienced her.

'He... he's not the person I
thought he was.'

Alissandra nodded, listening
carefully as the words were coaxed out.

'He came across as a paragon of
virtue, someone who sacrificed his time and power for the good of an
ideal and for the betterment of humanity. Then he was wounded out in
Sah'kel and everything has changed, it's like a different person has
taken his place. Or the mask has come off and the real one lying
underneath finally reveals its intentions.'

The older woman sipped her tea
thoughtfully, not commenting for some time on what she had just
heard.

'You say he was wounded in the
desert, did he mention to you what by?'

The question seemed odd, what had
his encounter out there to do with his character now? Then again, the
timing of the events converged so perhaps there was a reason for
asking.

'You think that the wound could
have changed him somehow?'

Alissandra was non-committal.
'It's possible that certain wounds could alter a person in ways,
though I don't see how he'd come about such a thing in the deep
desert. Did he tell you what caused the wound? What did it look like
to your eyes?'

She hesitantly detailed the
festering blackness inside one of the gashes, of how it wouldn't heal
conventionally and remained open irrespective of her efforts at
sewing it shut. All the while she watched Alissandra grow paler with
each passing moment of description.

'Are you okay?' she finally
asked. 'Have I spoken of it too graphically?'

She waved her off. 'No, honestly
it's fine. I've never had a good stomach for such things, you were
just right in detailing it in such a way.'

'You know something about what
could have caused this then?'

'Yes, sadly it's not something
that I can speak of to you, the information is privy to few and
shared by none.' She seemed apologetic about that, as if she wanted
to tell Ella but was being forced not to. 'It is safe to say that
this wound you speak of could not have caused such a shift in the
dynamic of El-Vador's personality. No my dear, I'm afraid you're just
learning what many already knew about that inhuman creature. He is
not like us in many ways, however much he attempts to blend in under
his various guises.'

Ella's heart sank, she knew that
Alissandra was speaking from experience and felt like such a fool for
thinking so highly of the creature Jimmy had been so terrified of.
Idly she wondered where he was now, if the rebellion in Urial had
been successful or if they'd all been put to death. She was tempted
to ask Alissandra but thought better of it at the last moment, she
had enough to deal with already without adding the emotional
repercussions of discovering her friend was dead.

'I know you don't want to talk
about him child, I can see in your eyes what many others have
witnessed long before any of us were born. He is an aberration, a
tool for the Emperor to use that tends to cut both ways. I would not
engage him so lightly as you have done for fear of him destroying all
that I am, I too learnt that the hard way and thus I tried to warn
you by having Eli contact you on my behalf.'

So the entire friendship had been
to protect her from this thing, she felt grateful for the attempt but
ultimately she doubted that even the Emperor with all the forces of
the land at his disposal could prevent El-Vador from doing as he
wished.

'Thank you for trying,' Ella
choked, then found she was crying.

Alissandra's arms delicately
wrapped round her, in spite of this there was no safety in them. She
was doomed to be controlled by this near-omnipotent force for the
rest of her life, to be used and abused on such a grand scale that it
made her previous life with Solomon seem trivial.