Crake pushed open the door of his brother’s house, and looked out onto a battleground.
Guns cracked and snapped in the cold winter night. Trench-coated Shacklemores fired lever-action shotguns from cover, their breath steaming the air. Men were clambering over the wall that surrounded the grounds, their shadows long in the light of electric lamps. Folk from the village, from the countryside; folk who’d once been glad of the wealth and prosperity that Rogibald Crake had helped bring to the area, the amenities he paid for and the school he funded.
Crake felt outrage as well as fear. They were attacking the manor? They were actually attacking the manor? But he couldn’t deny the evidence of his eyes.
The main mass of them had gathered behind the gates. He could hear the incoherent roar of their fury. Shacklemores shot at them from behind fountains and garden walls. Crake saw one man go tumbling back into the arms of his fellows, but those behind him pushed on, undeterred. The gate was stout and thick, and wouldn’t give way easily. Several men were wrapping a chain around the ironwork, no doubt hoping to drag it down. Others fired back through the bars, keeping the Shacklemores busy.
There were so many of them. So many, and more coming over the wall. Some were killed, but Crake saw others drop to the ground and go scurrying away across the night-shrouded lawns, rough-dressed men carrying clubs or pistols.
Condred was at his side, leaning on him, supported by his arm. He heard his brother groan, a sound of weary despair from the depths of his being. In the flat light from the house he was haggard and wan. He was barefoot, and his red silk gown was no protection against the chill. In his face there was something like acceptance, as if he’d long known this day would come.
‘They’re here for you, ain’t they?’ a voice snarled. Crake turned and saw one of the groundsmen, a man he didn’t know, advancing along the side of the house. He was a stocky, unshaven man with a cloth cap squashed down over his ears. He had a spade in his hands, and was holding it like a weapon.
‘Daemonist!’ he spat. Then he looked at Condred. ‘And you, his puppet! What black art brought you back when no doctors could? Whatever you once was, you ain’t no more.’
Crake saw fear and rage and murder in the man’s eyes, and he backed away into the foyer, pulling Condred in with him. But the groundsman lunged at him suddenly, made a feint with the spade. Crake jerked away, stumbled, and Condred’s weight brought him down. The two of them tripped and fell to the parquet floor in a heap.
The groundsman ignored Condred and went for Crake. He put his boot to Crake’s shoulder as he tried to get up, and shoved him back to the floor. He raised his spade, edge downward, aimed at Crake’s throat. Hesitated. Not so easy to kill a man. But Crake knew it was coming in a second or two, once he’d screwed up his courage.
A strange calm took him. He looked up at the grizzled face of the groundsman looming over him. His lips peeled back in a wide grin.
‘Hey. .’ he said quietly, though it hurt to speak with the man’s weight on his chest. ‘Hey, there’s no need for this.’
The groundsman stared down at him, and as he did so, his attention was caught by something. The glitter of a gold tooth. Crake saw the balled-up rage behind the groundsman’s eyes loosen a little.
‘Here. .’ he muttered. ‘That’s a nice tooth.’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ said Crake. ‘Now why don’t you get off me and put down that spade?’
The groundsman regarded the spade as if he couldn’t quite work out how it had got into his hands. ‘Reckon I will,’ he said. He stepped back, tossed the spade aside, and gave Crake a sheepish look.
Crake began to pick himself up. ‘Good. Now why don’t you-’
The groundsman’s chest exploded, spraying Crake’s face with warm flecks of blood. He fell to his knees and tipped sideways. Standing in the doorway was a Shacklemore, a gaunt man holding a shotgun, a scattered beard on his long, hollow face.
‘You alright?’ he asked them, and pulled Crake up before he had a chance to reply. He went and helped Condred after. Crake wiped the blood off his face and looked down at the dead man on the floor. There was a wet hole in his back. A pool of red was spreading from beneath the body, running down tiny channels in the parquet floor.
Another dead man. Once the initial shock had worn off, he found it didn’t mean a thing. He’d lived long enough in the world to shrug at a stranger’s corpse.
‘Let’s get you to the landing pad,’ said the Shacklemore brusquely. ‘We’re falling back.’
‘I thought you were supposed to defend this place,’ Crake said.
‘There’s two hundred people out there, or I’m a blind man,’ said the Shacklemore. He took Condred’s arm over his shoulder. ‘We’re bounty hunters first, bodyguards second and mercenaries third. Martyrs ain’t on the list.’
‘What about our father? Rogibald Crake?’
‘The old feller? Someone’s taking care of him.’
But the man was vague, and Crake wasn’t convinced. And he knew his father.
‘Take my brother to the landing pad,’ he said.
The lines around Condred’s mouth deepened in disapproval. ‘Leave him, Grayther. You know him. He’ll do as we will.’
Yes, thought Crake. I know him well enough.
But Condred saw his brother’s mind, and grabbed his arm. ‘You don’t have to make it up to him,’ he said. ‘Not to him.’
‘Go to Thesk,’ said Crake. ‘Perhaps I’ll see you there.’
Perhaps. And perhaps I’ll never see you again. Perhaps we’ll never again be able to look at each other without being reminded of Bess.
Crake looked long into his brother’s eyes, searching for something to say. Condred was thinking the same as he was. Neither knew what the future would bring. It was all too raw and new right now. In the end, he clasped his hand over Condred’s, and that was enough.
‘Get him out of here,’ he told the Shacklemore. ‘Keep him safe.’
‘Will do.’
Crake turned to leave, and then stopped and turned back. ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘You’ve a pistol in your belt. I’d better have that.’
‘Will you bollocks,’ scoffed the Shacklemore. ‘That’s my pistol.’
Crake grinned, and his tooth glinted. ‘I beg to differ.’
By the time he reached the mansion, the Shacklemores were in steady retreat. Groups of men shot at one another from cover. Bodies lay sprawled across herbaceous borders, bloodied hands dangling in ornamental pools. The fighting was still fiercest round the gates, but enough men had got over the walls to sow havoc among the defenders now.
I did this, he thought as he ran. They’re here for me. Seeing me take Condred to the sanctum was the last straw.
But no. He wouldn’t blame himself entirely. The Awakeners had riled them up, filled their heads with lies and nonsense, made them furious and frightened so the only thing they could do was hit out. Even the Shacklemore bullets didn’t stop them. All these deaths born out of hate and ignorance and superstition, and the bastards who started it were predictably nowhere to be seen.
He ran up the slope towards his father’s house, keeping to the edge of the lawns where there was some meagre cover, staying out of the light. A bullet chopped into the turf nearby and he saw someone aiming at him from over by the wall. He ignored them and kept going. After all his time on the Ketty Jay, he knew they were just wasting ammunition at that range.
What are you doing, Grayther Crake? What do you owe your father? The man never loved you.
But love didn’t matter. It was a question of duty. It was what a son ought to do. And maybe if Rogibald found out what Crake had done, maybe if he knew Condred was alright, maybe he’d smile and favour him at last.
Foolish, he thought. But he ran on anyway.