“Oh, for Gods’ sakes,” He pulled the arrow out and flung it over the edge of the cart, jumped down and knelt by the mule, placing a hand on its neck to feel for a pulse. There was nothing. The animal was definitely dead. Another arrow sped out of the dark and slammed into his back, just below the juncture of neck and shoulders. Before he was quite aware of doing so, Marius rose from his crouch, crossing the dozen feet between the cart and the bushes in no more than two heartbeats. He burst through the branches and into the tiny clearing beyond, grabbing the hidden archer by the throat and slamming him up against the bole of a tree before the man had time to notch another arrow.
“What the fuck,” Marius snarled as the terrified archer struggled for breath, “did that mule ever do to you?”
From behind him, a second assailant rushed at Marius, a long dagger raised above his shoulder. Without loosening his grip upon the archer, Marius turned. The new attacker lunged. Marius took a small step to the side, drew his arm away from his body, and grabbed the attacker just above the elbow as his strike slid past Marius’ ribs. He squeezed, and the second man screamed. As he pulled at his trapped arm Marius twisted his wrist, and a loud crack echoed across the clearing. The attacker stiffened in pain, and in that moment Marius lunged forward and butted him with all the strength in his dead neck muscles. There was another sharp crack and the swordsman slowly crumpled until only Marius’ grip on his arm held him up. He let go, and the dead assailant slid to the ground, sightless eyes turned up into his head. Marius turned back to the archer, still pinned to the tree by his unflinching grip.
“Why?” he growled, shaking his whimpering prisoner, and then, when he received no response, shouting. “Why?”
The archer said nothing, indeed, seemed capable of no reply. His gaze was fixed upon the dead stare of his companion and only a terrified sob escaped his lips at regular intervals, like a clockwork baby winding down. Marius curled his lip in disgust, and leaned forward so that his mouth brushed against his victim’s ear. The archer flinched, his gaze sliding round as far as it could towards Marius.
“Run,” Marius whispered. “Don’t stop. Ever. Not for cities, not for oceans, not for the edge of the world.” Gently, he loosened his grip upon his captive’s neck. “Go on,” he said, his voice soft in the terrified man’s ear. “Run.”
The terrified archer prised himself away from the tree. With one last look at his fallen colleague he stumbled towards the edge of the clearing. By the time he entered the brush he was running. Marius listened to his passage for perhaps half a minute, then sighed and looked around at his surroundings for the first time.
It was a meagre campsite, to say the least. The two bandits had obviously been laying in wait for unwary travellers, hoping to strike lucky, or at least snaffle some decent food. A tripod of crooked branches stood over a tiny circle of rocks, and the few charred sticks within were ample evidence that the fools hadn’t even possessed enough smarts to start a decent fire. A single battered plate perched on top of the branches. Marius wrinkled his nose at the contents. Whatever it was in life, the meagre meal inside had far too much gristle to have been in good health. He dropped the plate into the dirt, and scouted around.
Two thin, ripped blankets had been rolled up and placed against the base of a tree, and apart from the bow and knife at his feet, it seemed the only things his assailants owned were the threadbare clothes they wore. It was no wonder they were so eager to purloin the cart, Marius thought. Compared to their pathetic belongings it must have promised untold riches. Reminded of the attack, he reached up and pulled the arrow from his back, looked closely at it, then flung it from him in disgust. Even the arrows were old, the tip showing signs of re-carving and repeated hardenings in the fire. The arrow struck the corpse of the swordsman. Marius looked down at him for a few moments, then trudged back to the cart to rummage around in the back. Eventually, he withdrew a short-handled shovel and made his way back to the clearing. Picking a soft spot on the downhill side of a short incline, he dug a hole a few feet deep, then carried the dead man over and dropped him into it. He stood, staring down at the unmoving corpse.
“Come on,” he said eventually, then again, as the corpse in the hole made no attempt to rise, “Come on!”
Soon he was screaming it, tears streaming down his cheeks, his hands clenched into fists on his thighs as he crouched over and expelled his fear into the roughly dug hole.
“Come on, come on, come on you bastard. Get up. Get up. Please.” He sank to his knees, shoulders slumped, arms hanging loosely at his sides. “Please,” he whimpered, “Not just me.” The bandit stayed where he was, neck bent at an unnatural angle, eyes staring through the dirt wall into infinity.
Then Marius heard something – a scratching; the tiniest of movements from the bottom of the hole. He leaned forward, gripped the edge of the grave, eyes searching for animation in the swordsman’s corpse. The sound grew louder. Marius frowned. It sounded like digging. Dirt moved under the dead man, then a hole opened, tiny at first but growing larger and larger until it filled the bottom of the grave and the dead man was no longer held by the earth but supported by a dozen hands reaching up from below. As Marius watched he was slowly borne downwards into the dark, then passed beyond the edge of the grave to arms waiting just out of sight. Six faces peered up at Marius, their dead visages fixed in anger.
“The king,” six voices sounded in the dark, whilst dead eyes met his, “Where is our king?”
Marius fell back as the dead reached up and began to pull the walls of the grave in after them. He scrabbled backwards, beyond the line of trees at the clearing’s edge, the dead voices following him, “Where is our king? Where is our king?” until they were cut off and all that he could see from his hiding place was an unbroken plane of sand where the hole had been. He stood, eyes fixed on the empty spot, took one step backwards, and another, then turned, and with no more thought in his head than a dead man, ran from the clearing as if the wolves of Hell were chasing.
EIGHT
There are some objects in the universe so large, so immense, that they bend the laws of physics to suit themselves. Smaller things, even if they are themselves of such a size as to stagger the imagination, are caught within their gravitational pull, never to be released, and what does manage to escape is either too small to be noticed, or so broken and destroyed as to be useless. Philosophers in the King’s palace had recently announced that the planets orbited the sun in this way, and that light, a substance so large and all-encompassing that it covered the Earth like a blanket, was actually held in thrall to the spinning of our own planetary surface. No matter how large, or powerful, there is always something bigger that will suck you in, enslave you to its movement and make you a mere satellite.
Borgho City was such a place.
It is said that wherever a king resides lies the governance of a country, but wherever the largest river meets the sea lies the true power. Borgho City squatted over the largest delta at the mouth of the largest river in the largest country on the continent, and whatever power was held within her massive stone walls was as twisted and incomprehensible as the street system that had grown up over the decades of occupation. Its walls, it was said, had exhausted quarries as far away as the Penate Mountains. In fact, most of the walls were made of rammed earth, deposited in vast hills when the first harbour had been dredged from the silt and sand of the delta mouth, but Borgho City had grown so big that truth and memory were only two of its satellites. A mile from the city walls, the road Marius was on crested a rise, before plummeting down towards the nearest gate. Marius paused as he reached the top, found a nearby lump in the surrounding ground, and sat down to watch the traffic as it approached the entrance.