‘What d’you want?’ she whispered.
‘You speak… Jamur,’ he stuttered. He stepped forward presenting his hooded face, long stubble and haunted eyes. His accent was heavy on the vowels. ‘You’re not one of them?’ He seemed desperate and breathless.
‘One of whom?’
‘You… know who. Those… those things that came here.’ He was freezing, rubbing his arms vigorously and shivering in his thin, ragged clothing.
‘No, I’m not one of them,’ she replied.
Behind him, the street was deserted, but he kept gazing about him, scanning the area.
‘How did you survive?’ Verain asked, debating whether to invite him in. ‘We’ve been through several settlements and we never saw a soul.’
‘We’ve been hiding in a tavern cellar — seven of us, and we have been surviving with next to nothing. I came out to see if they have gone… Where are you from? How did you get to the — ’ he searched for the word in Jamur ‘ — educational facility?’
‘We’re cultists.’
‘Thank Bohr! I never thought I would be relieved to see a magician.’
We’re not magicians, she wanted to say, but it seemed pointless. Was she even a cultist without her relics? ‘We’re only passing through,’ she replied. ‘We’ll be gone in the morning.’
‘Take us with you,’ the man pleaded.
From the other side of the house came a sudden raking noise, harsh and staccato. Verain turned to the wall and then back at the man, into his wide brown eyes. Days of dirt and tears and snot had turned his grimace into something entirely primitive, and she could smell fish. ‘Let me in, please.’
‘I’m not sure I should. Tell me where you’re staying and we’ll come and find you in the morning. It’s probably safer if you-’
A stifled wail, the man vanished from the door, thumped on the ground and was dragged around the corner of the house. Moments later she could hear a terrified scream from further along the street.
Guilty now that she had not let him in, Verain grasped the knife more firmly and hurried in the direction of the man’s wails.
Moonlight gave an odd texture to the scene, highlighting the snow along the main thoroughfare, though leaving the buildings in utter darkness. Anyone could have been looking out from behind shutters or windows, and she would not have been able to see them.
A trail cut through the snow, an erratic path of blood. She staggered on and then she saw it, in the doorway of the adjacent building: a creature several feet tall, a glistening, bulbous shell, hunched over the corpse of the man.
It faced her. She froze, her fear rooting her to the spot.
‘Verain!’ Dartun’s voice, from behind. ‘What the hell are you doing out here? You’re too valuable to put yourself in danger like this.’
She couldn’t take her eyes off the gruesome-looking shell-creature. It was like the others they had seen on their way north.
‘Get back to the house,’ Dartun commanded.
Just then, the thing moved towards them, abandoning the corpse and leaving it splayed across the steps.
‘What is it?’
‘Cirrip,’ Dartun breathed. ‘It’s only a Cirrip.’
Another flashback: that was their name in the otherworld, these foot-soldiers of the Akhaioi.
‘It’s not connected to their hive-mind,’ Dartun said. ‘This stray shouldn’t be out here alone. It should not have killed this man either, it should have taken him back with the others through the Gates.’
The beast staggered with an awkward yet strangely fluid gait towards the two of them. She could see it clearly now, its hideous claw-hands, the intense musculature beneath the armour, the flaring tendons, the deep black gloss of its skin.
Dartun moved forwards, cautiously manoeuvring so he stood between Verain and the creature. He tried speaking to it in its own language, something that she found profoundly bizarre, but it was to no avail — the thing lashed out with a claw. Dartun held up his arm to block the blow; the contact producing a brittle crack. At first she thought his arm had broken, but, instead, Dartun was rising from the ground, two feet up, four feet, then above the rooftops, his arms held outstretched for balance, his body slowly rotating on a vertical axis.
The Cirrip, still on the ground, began to click and hiss, craning its head as it watched Dartun proceed ever higher and then — like a bolt of lightning trailing purple light — Dartun dropped to the ground feet first and drove his boot into the head of the creature.
A jet of blood spurted out of the Cirrip’s eyes, and it toppled backwards to the ground, its face imploded. Dartun tumbled forwards over its spasming form.
‘Your knife, Verain,’ he demanded, regaining his poise.
She stumbled over to offer the blade. Dartun took it, and slit its throat.
‘It must have broken free from their pack,’ Dartun said, quite calmly, wiping the blade in the snow. ‘They possess a connected sentience. They tend to swarm.’
‘How could you talk to it?’
‘Something I gleaned from their world,’ he replied sharply.
‘The army is marching down to raid another island, isn’t it?’ Verain gestured to the alien corpse. ‘These things are going to continue until they wipe out every city on the continent, aren’t they?’
‘Which is why it’s vital we get to Villjamur so that we may establish a more peaceful resolution.’
‘You could always fly there,’ she suggested, ‘given this apparent new ability.’
‘I didn’t even know I could until recently. I wonder how far I can go?’ He paused momentarily and scanned her face. ‘No, I must ensure you’re all protected.’
He trudged through the snow to the remains of the man who the Cirrip had been toying with moments earlier. Verain followed him.
‘He’s dead, all right,’ Dartun announced.
The man’s body was broken in two, his torso no longer fully connected to his legs. Bones jutted from the open wounds.
‘He told me there were more people in a cellar under the tavern,’ Verain said. ‘He was looking to see if we could help them.’
Dartun shook his head. ‘The best thing for them to do is stay in that cellar.’
‘But we can take them with us — escort them to another island.’
‘We haven’t got the time,’ Dartun replied.
‘At least help them to a boat-’
‘We haven’t got the time,’ Dartun repeated forcefully, and she knew when to stop.
She understood that they needed to get to Villjamur as quickly as possible but regretted that this necessitated leaving these innocents to fend for themselves. She only hoped that Dartun knew of some way to stop the ongoing bloodshed. Otherwise, she feared, this was just the beginning.
TWENTY-SIX
For hours the next day, the Knights sat in their lounge area, in silence, uncertain of whether they should go back onto the streets. They had received no instructions. Instead they gazed at the black pall of smoke hanging over the city: vast funeral pyres, carrying away the souls of the deceased; this was the limit of respect the Cavesiders had received from the authorities.
Exhaustion filtered through every fibre in Lan’s body. She stretched out across the floor beside the fire, into which Vuldon was gazing intently, prodding it now and then with a poker. Tane emitted the odd sigh, but was otherwise sprawled forwards across the table like a drunk. They avoided eye contact with one another. ‘It could have been worse…’ Tane finally offered, but a grunt from Vuldon terminated that conversation.
Lan felt immense guilt over what had happened but tried to find a logical explanation for why it had occurred. ‘They targeted the Emperor’s new trading area with violence — true. But this was a peaceful protest. Maybe the anarchists are just an extreme faction of the Cavesiders, but the majority want a more peaceful solution?’
‘It would explain the military’s heavy-handedness,’ Tane agreed. ‘They probably expected the worst after the events in the iren.’