The Heretic Land (17 page)

‘Not fruit,’ Juda said. ‘Run.’

The trees grew in a wide clump at the edge of the river’s flood plain, and beyond the copse Bon could see the hillside rising out of the valley, speckled with rocky outcroppings and swathes of purple and brown heathers. As they closed on the trees he risked another glance back, and they had run so far that it took him a few moments to place the ruined village.

‘Hurry!’ Juda said. He was beneath the first few trees now, leaning against a trunk and looking around in a panic, and Leki joined him, pressing her forehead against a tree and breathing hard.

Bon walked backwards towards them, scanning the valley floor until he made out the humps of the tumbled village. The three Skythians were still there, stick figures atop one of the humps. If he hadn’t known what they were he’d have thought them bushes or trees.

They fell out of sight, as if startled.

And then he saw the slayers.

He dropped to the ground and crawled backwards beneath the tree canopy, only standing when he was well within their shade.

‘They’re so fast,’ he said softly. And they were. They seemed
to be outrunning their shadows, loping across the grassland like the red lyons Bon had seen in captivity in New Kotrugam. From this distance it was difficult to make out any detail, but they moved with an inhuman gait. They pounded the ground with heavy feet, as if it too was a target.

‘Find sticks,’ Juda said. ‘The longer and thicker, the better.’

‘We’re going to fight them with sticks?’ Bon said.

‘No. Here.’ Juda lobbed a stick at him, and Bon snatched it from the air, wielding it and feeling like all the gods’ fools in one.

‘Those aren’t fruits,’ Leki said. She’d been looking up, not across the plain at their pursuers, and now Bon followed her gaze.

‘Stark blight eggs,’ Juda said. He found another stick and handed it to Leki, who took it without looking. ‘I was once close to the Engine I told you about, and I credit the worst pain of my life with driving me to where it lay hidden. One of these …’ – he nodded at one of the shiny red eggs, hanging very much like fruit, but spiked for protection and slightly opaque. There was something moving inside – ‘… burst against my cheek. The thing inside slithered down my neck and got caught in my collar, and by the time I plucked it out and threw it over the cliff it had stung me enough times to drive me mad. When I regained consciousness I was on the beach, close to—’

‘Fuck the Engine for now,’ Leki said. ‘What do we do here?’ She was looking past Bon urgently, and he glanced over his shoulder. He could differentiate between the male and female slayers now. Evil and ugly in different ways.

‘They’re weak and disorientated when they emerge,’ Juda said. ‘But that doesn’t last for long.’ He knocked one of the bulging red eggs with his stick, and when it split open he ran.

Bon had an instant to see what came out, and to try and make out
what it was. He’d never heard of stark blights, and the glimpse he caught gave him few clues as to what species they might be. There was a flutter of what could have been wings, the snap of a beak or claws, the sinuous remnant of a neck or body. Pale red, streaked purple, fluid accompanied it to the ground as it slipped from its egg, like a haze of gas easing it down. Moments after it hit the grass it gave a cry or a growl, like serrated metal grinding across stone, and then Bon was following Leki and Juda into the trees.

They ran line abreast, careful not to stray into each other’s paths. The eggs were everywhere, and the problem wasn’t so much aiming as avoiding them with other parts of their bodies. They hung heavy and low from some of the lower branches, and Bon had no wish to touch them with his hands or bare forearms, or his face. He watched the ground for obstructions, swung the stick, felt it striking branches and leaves and eggs, saw the things falling from the corner of his eye, and ran on, listening to their deep scratching calls as they stirred behind him.

They reached a clearer area where a rough circle of stones surrounded a flat rock. Whatever it had been was long lost to antiquity, but Juda paused and turned, eyes wide as he looked past Bon and down through the woods. Bon and Leki followed his gaze.

The woods sloping downhill to the plain seemed tainted red. The air hung heavy with it, a drifting mist that was staining trees and lower plants a light pink. Floating through these faint clouds, the stark blights.

‘Won’t they just run around?’ Leki asked.

‘This close to us, I’m hoping their caution is lessened,’ Juda said. ‘Hoping they’re blinded by …’

Juda was staring at Bon again, but now his eyes were wider. ‘Keep still! And don’t—’

Bon felt
movement in his hair. He slapped at it with his hand, and the stark blight wrapped filaments around his fingers, stinging the back of his hand, his palm, his wrist, and he could feel its toxins pumping along the veins in his arm, a slick of heat that set fire to his hand and moved quickly up towards his elbow.

He glared at Juda, trying not to scream.

Leki came at him, then Juda. Though Bon knew they were talking he could not hear, because his heart was thudding so hard it was all he heard. His treacherous heart, pumping the fury about his body and setting fires.

Bon dropped his stick and fell, thinking,
Not again!
And as he felt the power of the scream leaving
his throat the pain exploded, and his heart beat him into darkness.

Darkness was closing, and Juda felt the familiar madness readying to take him. He had often cursed his heritage and the tainted sleep it gave him, but he would never curse the magic that aggravated the condition. Especially now, when the man he carried might lead him to discover the greatest source of magic there might be anywhere in the world – a dead god, risen.

Juda had smoked his final scamp cigar, and if they had time he could have searched for more scamp growing between the moist roots of trees. He was sure he had seen some moths fluttering from leaf to leaf as they’d worked their way uphill. But there
was
no time.

If they did not reach the gas marshes by nightfall, and find somewhere to hide away, it would be the end. He could not accept the end when he was so close to a new beginning.

Juda had never been a strong man, but his strength and stamina now came from a bitter determination. Bon lay slung over his right shoulder, head nodding against his back as Juda planted foot after foot and lifted himself up
the hillside. Leki was behind him, helping him as much as she could by pushing against his lower back. She was not so much lifting him as propelling him forward, and her effort aided more than he could have hoped. It was the physical contribution that helped, but also the simple fact that they had the same aim. Juda had always been a loner, but he was finding this company pleasing.

Wrench Arcs craved no company save that of magic. Perhaps, after all, he had some way yet to go.

They had heard the slayers entering the woodland. Their grunts as they ran, animal sounds like swine being herded to the slaughter. The impact of their wide feet on the leafy ground. Clanking of poorly tied weapons, chafing of leather armour, rasping of breath through mouths crowded with too many teeth. Juda had never learned exactly where the slayers originated, but he suspected some sort of interbreeding programmes by the Spike. Steppe warrior and lyon, perhaps. And there were other rumours.

They had heard the squeals, and then the screams, and then the impact of falling bodies as the stark blights had fulfilled their natural function of protecting themselves and their kind from attack.

‘Not far to the top,’ Leki said from behind him, and Juda knew she was trying to reign in her exhaustion. She could not let herself sound tired when he was carrying Bon’s weight as well as his own. He looked up from the ground directly before his feet and saw that she was right. The trees were much sparser here, though still speckled with stark blight eggs. The ridgeline was close, and beyond that would be the wide plateau that led eventually to a deep ravine. They would descend, follow the flow of the raging river, and then enter the gas marshes spread across its flood plain. They were constantly shifting places, a slow-moving sea of mud and gas, rocky
outcroppings and swallow-holes, and he had never dared venture across them before. He’d heard tales from one who had, and she had claimed to be the only survivor of a group of eight.
Poison gas and steam to melt the flesh from your face
, she’d told him over a bottle of bad wine in one of Vandemon’s saloons, looking into a hazy distance of painful memory.
Bottomless marshes, swallow-holes, wasps the size of your head, and wet-wolves that breathe mud and surface anywhere, without warning. They eat bones. They spit out the flesh and blood.

He’d doubted her stories, suspecting them to be embellished excuses for a badly planned journey. He’d been
free
to doubt, because he’d had no reason to ever travel within miles of the gas marshes.

Now they were the only place where they might shake the slayers from their trail. Through the marshes, the slayers would lose their scent to the acidic air. Juda and the others would flee north.

North, towards Venden Ugane and what the Skythians believed he had found. Though Juda had considered seeking out Venden on his own, to get the boy’s trust it would be best to stick with his father. And with the slayers still on their trail, he hoped there was safety in numbers.

‘How long will they be down?’ Leki asked.

‘Depends how many times they were stung.’

‘Bon was only stung once. Maybe they’re dead! Maybe those things have killed them!’

‘No,’ Juda said, too exhausted to explain how he knew.
The slayers might have died many times before.
He’d heard those rumours, whispered in dark saloons, and could not afford to doubt them now.

‘You sure we’ll lose them in the gas marshes?’

‘Yes,’ Juda gasped. He had to stop, and it seemed that momentum
was driving him, because the sudden weight dragged him to his knees. ‘Help me … up.’

Leki lifted, and Juda considered shifting Bon to his other shoulder. But nothing would be comfortable. So instead he thought about how things had changed, and what might come, and he tried to forget the dangers behind them and the promise of madness the approaching night would bring to him. His nightmares would be bad, so he concentrated on his dreams.

Every Broker is a selfish beast
, Rhelli Saal had told him. Rhelli was one of the first Brokers he’d met in New Kotrugam, and she had become a friend and sometime lover for the short time they’d spent together.
How can they not be, when magic is such a personal thing? We join forces and give ourselves a name, but we all want the same thing, and that’s for magic to be ours and ours alone.

You want that too?
he’d asked, looking at her across the sea of bubbles in the giant bath they were sharing.

Of course
, she said.

But we’re not like the Wrench Arcs. Not like them.

There’s a difference between selfishness and cruelty. I can be selfish but maintain my morals. Selfish, and like myself.

They must start like that.
He’d been thinking of the Wrench Arcs a lot since being welcomed, cautiously and tentatively, into the Brokers’ embrace. Independent, vicious, cruel, and quite certainly mad, the Wrench Arcs wandered the continent with a shadow of myth and a haze of rumour camouflaging them against being caught. They slipped from darkness to darkness, and only made themselves known when a whisper of magic passed from lip to ear. Then they would come and take it, and whoever might be in their way would
suffer.

Every Broker is a selfish beast.
As soon as he had arrived on Skythe and caught his first hint of the magical dregs there, he had known that to be true. His Regerran blood and night-time madness, the murders of pathetic Skythians … he knew that many would see him as a Wrench Arc. But his shame at what he did meant he was not quite there. Wrench Arcs were shameless.

‘Juda, the day’s wearing on,’ Leki said.

‘We’ll get there.’

‘But, your—’ Leki stopped. She did not wish to call it madness.

‘We’ll get there.’ He could offer her no comfort. If they did not reach the marshes, he would have to flee from them before the night took him down. Alone, they would all be easy targets for the slayers.

Bon groaned. Juda paused, trying to shove his relief aside. Even if he did stir, the man would not be able to walk on his own for some time.

‘Bon,’ Leki said softly, and as Juda continued pushing himself uphill, she whispered to the man slung over his shoulder. He responded with groans at first, and then muttered words. By the time Juda hit the ridge and collapsed, Bon was able to break his fall when he slipped from his saviour’s shoulder. Juda hit the cool, damp heather and rolled his face against it, relishing the freshness against his sweaty skin. He caught Bon watching him, and saw gratitude through the pain.

‘I can walk,’ Bon said.

‘I doubt it,’ Juda replied. Bon’s hand was swollen and red, exuding heat he could almost feel from where he lay.

Leki knelt beside Bon and cradled his head in her lap. She looked from one man to the other.

Juda stood. His knees shook, muscles in his legs quivering. He needed food, energy, but they had no time to stop
and eat. He looked downhill and saw no movement, but that did not mean the slayers were still down. They could have been moving painfully through the shadows lower down the hillside, slashing their skin to vent infected blood, growling away their pain.

‘His hand,’ Leki said, moving her own around Bon’s, but not quite touching.

‘I could cut it to release the pressure, but infection would soon follow,’ Juda said. ‘Best to let it settle on its own.’ He drank the last drop of water from his canteen. It was warm, and did little to sate his thirst.

‘He was bitten on the ship, too. Unlucky.’

‘Maybe,’ Juda panted.

‘You can’t carry him any further. I can.’

‘You?’ Juda said, immediately feeling a pang of regret.