This was a dying world, after all. And what do dead and dying bodies attract? Scavengers, parasites, carrion eaters.
They came up out of the cracks and craters, crawling and creeping, on two legs and four, swarming across the dead ground towards us. They were all around us, running and leaping, wave after wave of them, seething like maggots in an open wound. I didn’t know if they originated in this place, or came here from somewhere else, but the nature of this place had got to them. They looked like they were aspiring to be human, but falling short. They looked rough, unfinished, the details of their bodies blurred or corrupted or missing. They didn’t even have faces, just phosphorescent, rotting eyes and sharp-toothed circular mouths, like lampreys.
They surged forward from every side, and there seemed no end to their numbers. I subvocalised my activating Words, but nothing happened. I tried them again, but my armour didn’t respond. I looked at the Sarjeant-at-Arms, and the shock in his face told me all I needed to know. He made grasping motions with his hands, trying to summon the guns that came to him by right, and nothing happened. Molly raised her arms in the stance of summoning, and then looked at me blankly as nothing happened.
“It’s this place,” said Subway Sue. “Complicated magics can’t work here. Or complicated sciences. The disintegrating laws of reality can’t support them. That’s why so many major players never made it out of here. We’re helpless. Defenceless.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Giles Deathstalker. He swept his long sword back and forth before him. “A strong right arm, a good blade, and a forthright heart always work.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Stab, his long blade suddenly in his hand.
Molly reached down into the tops of her boots and pulled out two slender silver blades. “Arthames,” she said crisply. “Witch daggers. I mostly use them for ceremonial work, but they’re no less sharp and nasty for that.”
She handed one to me. It felt surprisingly heavy for such a delicate-looking thing. The Sarjeant-at-Arms pulled a long blade with jagged edges out of his sleeve.
“Albanian punch dagger,” he said. “Always a good idea to have a little surprise in reserve. For when you absolutely have to kill every living thing that annoys you.”
“Knives won’t work,” said Subway Sue hollowly. “Swords won’t work. There’s just too many of them. We’re all going to die here. Like everybody else.”
“I think this place is getting to you,” said Molly. “Stay behind me and you’ll be fine.”
“Numbers are never any guarantee of success,” said Giles. “Any trained soldier knows that. Stand your ground, make every blow count, remember your training, and you’ll be fine. A trained soldier with a blade is a match for any number of unarmed rabble.”
We stood shoulder to shoulder, our weapons held out before us. Subway Sue sat down suddenly inside the circle and covered her face with her hands. The scavengers were running towards us, bounding across the broken ground, driving forward from every side at once. Wave upon wave, in numbers too great to count. If there’d been anywhere to run, I’d have run. But the bright pillar of light seemed as far away as ever, and we were surrounded. So all that was left was to stand and fight, and, if need be, die well.
Hopefully, someone else would find a way to get to the tower in time, and stop it. I wished…well. There were so many things I wished I’d done, or said. So many things I meant to do … but I suppose that’s always true, no matter when you die. I glanced at Molly, and we shared one last sweet, savage smile. And then the scavengers hit us.
They reached Giles first, and he cut them down with effortless ease. His long blade swept back and forth as though it was weightless, the incredibly keen edge slicing through flesh and bone alike. Dark blood spurted and the scavengers fell, but they never made a sound. Giles laughed happily, doing what he did best, and glorying in it. Mr. Stab reached out casually with his blade, cutting throats, piercing bellies, stabbing eyes with graceful skill. He smiled too, but there was no human emotion in his eyes, only a dark, desperate need forever unsatisfied. The Sarjeant-at-Arms stamped and thrust with brutal efficiency, killing everything that came within reach. He was frowning, as though engaged in necessary, distasteful work.
Molly and I fought side by side, hacking and stabbing at the horribly unfinished creatures that kept looming up before us. The scavengers had no sense of tactics, or even self-preservation. They just came at us with clawed hands brittle as dead twigs, their rotting eyes glowing, dark saliva dripping from their circular mouths. There was nothing in them but the need to kill and feed. To drag us down and tear us apart, and never know or care who it was they were destroying.
The dead piled up around us, the flesh already decaying, the dark blood eagerly soaked up by the parched stone ground. My whole body ached from the strain of wielding the silver blade without pause or rest, of hacking and cutting through flesh like mud, that seemed to suck and catch at the blade. I was bruised and cut, my clothes torn, sweat and blood running down my face. I could hear Molly breathing harshly beside me, and Giles singing some obscure battle song to my other side. There was something almost inhuman about his cheerful refusal to be stopped or even slowed by the impossible numbers set before him. He killed and killed, and was always ready for more, like a starving man at a feast. It crossed my mind then that, in some ways, Giles Deathstalker was even scarier than Mr. Stab.
And then suddenly, as though some unheard cry had been given, the scavengers retreated. One moment they were attacking with all their silent fury, and the next they were scrabbling away across the dried-up plain, falling back like a retreating tide. Giles flicked drops of black blood off his long blade, and then leaned on it. He looked around him, smiling at the piled-up bodies littered around us, and then nodded briefly, as though contemplating a good day’s work. Molly and I leaned on each other, breathing hard.
“They’ll be back,” Subway Sue said from behind us. I turned and glared at her.
“We have to get out of here. There must be a way. Find it!”
“Yes,” Sue said slowly. “I have been communing with this place. It speaks to me. One of us must make a stand here, so the others can get to the light.”
“What?” said Molly. “Where did that come from?”
Subway Sue looked at her tiredly. “I know the ways of hidden paths. I can see the rules here, written into the dying world. If we all stay, we all die. One of us must make a stand, sacrifice themselves for the sake of the others. So they can go.”
“We should draw lots,” said Giles.
“No,” Sue said immediately. “It has to be a willing sacrifice. A positive act, set against the entropy of this place. It’s not how far you walk, here. You could walk all the days of your life, and never reach the light. But you can draw it to you by a noble act. So which of us is ready to die, so the others can live?”
“There has to be another way,” said Molly. “We don’t abandon our own people. Tell them, Eddie!”
“I’ll stay,” I said.
“What?” Molly looked at me numbly.
“I’ll stay,” I said. “This was my mission, my idea. My responsibility.”
“No it isn’t!” Molly glared round at the others. “Tell him!”
“You can’t stay, Edwin,” said the Sarjeant-at-Arms calmly. “The family needs you to take down Truman and destroy the tower. You’re the man, these days. So I’ll stay. I said anything for the family, and the world, and I meant it. You’re all going to be needed, where you’re going. You’re special. I’m not.”
“Sarjeant,” I said, but he cut me off with a look.
“Eddie, I want this. I want what I do to matter, for once. To be the hero, not just the one who trains them and sends them out. I always dreamed of a last stand like this, defying impossible odds for a noble cause. To save the family, and the world. So, get them out of here, Eddie. Take down Truman and the tower. Make the family proud.”