Chapter Seven: Part Two

Continued from Chapter Seven: Part One

A burst of flame and force from one of the sparking balls of the Scarpy rocked him back. The sudden force woke him, a steadying vibration. He pushed himself to his feet with the pickaxe. With it he knocked the grate on the duct off. Hooking its head in the duct he climbed up to the opening. After only four inches of flat, the two foot by four foot duct went straight down, ending only at the basement. Twig dove in head first. The last he saw, the Scarpy he’d shanked had the knife out of his arm. Kneeling, he hid it away in his coat. The Scarpy on the second floor climbed through the hole. He and the third with the pickaxe saw Twig dive into the duct. They would not follow him. It was not their way. They were relentless hunters. But when they would predict and counteract more than pursue. Twig knew that from boot camp.


It gave Twig a second to rest. He fell through the dusty duct. His eyes closed, and it seemed like an eternity. He concentrated on nothing. It felt to him as if the walls of the duct disappeared. He knew neither up or down. For a moment, he felt alone in an empty universe. His body still ached and froze, seeming-stiff as in dying. But his mind cleared. He found his center

Then he had fallen long enough. Opening his eyes he looked into the duct extending into the ceiling of the second story. He grabbed the edge of it. His body swung down past him. With his toes he stopped his descent silently. The sound came through the wall of the Scarpy yammering among themselves. They moved toward the stairs near the far end of the room. They would stand guard at the top of the stairs up from the cellar, Twig deemed. In the meantime, Twig reached into the duct before him. About three feet down it, there was a cutting in its top. Twig had picked the right duct. Inside the cutting Twig grasped a handle. If he had not known just where to reach he would have had trouble finding the handle. It took some strength to pull it, so that rats wouldn’t pull it on accident. He pulled it, straining back against the side of the duct.

It slide with a momentous clunk. The clunk triggered creaks and screeches, then mechanical clicks and whirs fading into the quiet of distance. He only hoped this would work. This lever should have been thrown at the same time as one of the others. They had never discussed the possibility of only one soldier triggering the whole self-destruct himself. Twig wasn’t sure if something strange would go wrong.

The distant, mechanical chain of sounds continued. Twig let go of the lever and the side of the duct. He dropped into the dark, down two floors into the basement. He landed on a bend of duct following the cellar ceiling. The joint in the duct collapsed under the weight of his body. Dust fell with him out of the gap he made. His body crunched onto a pile of coal. For a moment he lay there, listening to the Scarpy chattering between themselves and stomping in the room above, and to the now faint grinding and clicking that the lever in the duct triggered. The mechanism to trigger the cave-in made the noise. It surprised him how far the mechanism reached. Even as he lay there in the coal he heard the mechanism give a final clunk—a sound with satisfyingly ultimate solidness. He knew not what would happen next. Getting to his feet, he stood in the dark cellar, the pensive silence. The Scarpy had fallen silent, awaiting him. Perhaps they had also heard the clunk.

It seemed that nothing would happen. Aside from the dust settling around Twig nothing moved. One trigger perhaps did nothing alone. He still must release the other two catches. The Scarpy guarding the way up still must be fought. Twig took a step toward the rickety stairs out of the cellar. A sliver of light shined through the closed door at the top. A shadow moved across it. Twig reached over his shoulder for the bow.

A fizzling sound came from behind him. At first he thought it sounded like sand running through an hourglass. Expecting to see a red spark, Twig wheeled, looking for the source of the noise. He saw nothing but the dirty stone walls of the cellar. The sound grew louder so that Twig could pinpoint its source. Near the base of the wall, but not from inside the room—not sand, either. Gravel ran away, outside the cellar, lower than the level of the ground. The sound grew suddenly very loud. The stones of the cellar began to sink and slide away from the foundations. The wood and metal structure above began to groan. Cracks laced the floor from the wall toward Twig. Rafters over his head bowed. They would not hold the weight of the breaking building for long.

Twig raised his eyebrows, anticipating the tons of infrastructure disintegrating onto his head. Whoever had designed this autodestruct mechanism either had great faith in a Zombie’s powers to escape a tight spot, or they cared very little for their foot soldiers.

Progress suspended for a bit as I have posted almost to the end of what I have written.

Chapter Seven: Part One

Continued from Chapter Six: Part Four

Chapter Seven

Twig drew the feather of his arrow to his ear. He aimed at the Scarpy on the right. The Scarpy cackled and hopped through the snow, overjoyed to have something to do it seemed. Embers and sparks dribbled from his mouth and his eyes glowed yellow in the shadows of Cankerous Gorge.

“Just hold real still,” the one on the left said, his voice low. He raised his sword and pointed it at Twig. “This can never take long.”

Twig glanced at the one on the left. He had a more commanding presence, like he led the Scarpy. He was a little bigger as well. Looking back at the one on the right, Twig took a good aim. He released his arrow. It sung through the cold air. Scarpy have thick skin and they’re fast bastards. With a cry, the Scarpy sidestepped. The arrow, aimed for his belly, glanced off his side just above his thigh bone. No lasting harm, but it made him stop laughing. It distracted him so that Twig could make a run for the artificer’s building.

That building had been where the sparking bears had been cross-bred with the fire impelled from Scarpy powder. One of the three triggers to cause the cave-in of the whole complex had been built into one of the inside walls of the building when it had been built. The doors were chained shut, like the barracks. Twig ran for the nearest ground floor window. He took up a gnawed chunk of bar from one of the lids on the bear pits. Throwing the bar, he broke one of the windows before reaching it. The snow scattered from his feet as he leapt through the shattering glass into the building.

His boots kicked up a puff of dust when he landed on the floorboards inside. He broke into a run at once, weaving between the worktables arranged in the room. The room nearly took up the same footprint as the building itself. Aisles of worktables covered in few remains of broken chemists’ gear stood in tiers. The middle of the room had a cage of crisscrossed iron bars, where the bears had been observed and manipulated. Twig hopped onto the nearest worktable Leaping from worktable to worktable, he ran toward the bear cage’s open doors.

Accompanied by a shout from a Scarpy, one of the windows thirty feet away on Twig’s left shattered. The Scarpy had leapt through it. He landed on one of the worktables on that end of the room. Heavier than Twig, the Scarpy’s momentum knocked the fifteen foot long worktable off its legs.  Without bothering to get on any other workbenches he forced his way through the aisles toward Twig. He heaved worktables out of his way. He no longer smiled. The situation no longer amused him. He was the one Twig had got with his arrow. The other Scarpy plunged through a window further along the wall. Something sparked in his hand, like a match in the moment of its ignition. Going across the tops of the tables Twig went faster than the Scarpy. He slashed at pipes in the ceiling as he went. Many were dry. Some began leaking oil for the lamps and aritificers’ machines.

Leaping from the last worktable, Twig reached the open doors of the cage. The Scarpy threw the sparking thing--a sound a little like sand falling through an hourglass accompanied it. When it hit the floor an eruption of force and fire came from it, like in the barracks but smaller. It missed Twig. Several worktables blew into the air from the explosion. Twig took a wrong step when he landed and stumbled into the stone floor of the cage. He turned and fell back-first against the bars on the far side.

He stayed still there for a moment. The breath had been knocked out of him. He chose not to inhale again just then. The Scarpy approached. The one on the left took something from under his coat. A flash of flame lit against it. It began to spark. Twig drew an arrow. He wanted some wadding. And matches. He’d light the oil dripping from the pipes in the ceiling then. He had neither. Taking his aim on the Scarpy he waited. The Scarpy threw the sparking thing in his hand. It was a fast throw, straight at Twig. It would hardly have gone straighter or faster if shot from a wrist rocket. Watching it come spinning and sparking toward him, Twig considered what it would do when it hit him. Wondering about the result, Twig aimed at the sparking ball and shot. The arrow whistled and hit the thing just high of its center. Deflected off its course, it ricocheted straight at the growing puddle of oil. It exploded on impact. The flames belched forth caught the oil alight. It burned hot and spread across the tables and wooden floor.

Twig hesitated no longer than that. He began climbing up the inside of the cage. It had no ceiling. The bars continued in a column up the three floors of the building culminating in a leaded glass skylight. Sticking the black bow into the quiver on his back, he climbed quickly. There was no opening till the very top where windows had been made just below the ceiling on the third floor. The artificers stuck tubes and pipes through the narrow windows to pour chemicals on the bears. A glance up earlier had revealed that the tubes had been removed, leaving the space empty.

The Scarpy stomped into the bottom of the cage. They screeched up at him, cussing but in the Scarpy dialect. Twig only knew terms to describe fighting in Scarpy. Twig predicted that both of them would have one of their sparking balls in hand--he could hear the falling of hourglass sand sound. Coiling and releasing the strength in his arms and legs, he leapt sideways and up. He caught hold of the farthest crisscross in the bars he could reach. One of the sparking balls flew through the bars and hit the floor, exploding on the shadowy second floor. Desks blew away from it. The second hit the bars and exploded just behind Twig’s back. The force of it and his own weight swung him forward. Releasing the bars where he had a hold he went the couple feet to the next wall to his right and caught a hold there. He climbed again. With a few grumbled words the Scarpy left the cage. Twig thought he heard “stairs.”

He reached the peaked, leaded window ceiling of the cage. Taking a peak out before proceeding, Twig caught a glance of something falling from one of the gantries sticking from the cliff. It fell toward the roof of the building. Twig only saw it for a moment. Then snow drifted on the window obscured it. Curling through the empty space at the top of the cage, Twig climbed into the top floor. There were no windows here. The only light came from the leaded skylight at the top of the cage and the light rising from the floors below through it. As Twig got out of the cage a huge thump smote on the roof. The thing from the gantry landed. It began smashing on the roof as if with a pickaxe. Landing on the floor, Twig ran between the cots on this side of the room. The artificers had slept up here.  The opening of a duct stuck from each of the walls. One of the ducts had a switch in it. He only hoped he remembered the right one.

On the far side of the cage, the pickaxing Scarpy broke through the roof. In a hale of plaster and splintered wood, he fell into the room, bringing more light. Twig glanced back. The Scarpy’s yellow glowing eyes stared through the falling dust. He shouted instructions. Twig just heard the footsteps on the floor below him before they got just ahead of him. From the sound, the Scarpy reached the same place. Twig strafed to the left. Just in time as the floor ahead of him broke from below. The head and arms of one of the Scarpy erupted in an explosion of broken rubble and light from below.

Twig leapt in the middle of strafing, wanting to get further away. With a shout, the Scarpy lashed out toward Twig. He caught a hold of Twig’s leg. It brought Twig down, breaking one of the undressed cots. Twig twisted, drawing Silk’s knife. The knife was narrow-bladed. He thrust it between the bones on the Scarpy’s forearm. The Scarpy howled, an orange glow in his throat. His hand let go of Twig. Leaving the knife, Twig scrambled away and back to his feet. He didn’t look back again until he reached the wall under the grate to the duct. A whooshing in the air behind him caught his attention. Turning swiftly, he saw just in time that the Scarpy had thrown his pickaxe. With his eyes suddenly wide, Twig raised his hands. The pickaxe whirled. The sharp end came where his fingers could touch it. Brushing his right hand against the side of the point, he redirected it. With his left he followed the wooden handle. The brush of his fingers slowed it a little. His left hand matched the speed of the handle. Even though he slowed it, the force the Scarpy had given to the pickaxe would outweigh Twig. He braced his shoulder.

His grip firm on the pickaxe, it yanked him off his feet. He flew the last five feet into the wall  under the duct. The wall cracked under his shoulder. Distant pain fizzled from his heel to his temple on his right side, like an old bruise came all at once. The electric buzz of the pickaxe having an ill impact on the wall almost broke his grip. He kept his hold on it. His body could no recover immediately and he fell to his knees.

Continued on February 13...

Chapter Six: Part Four

Continued from Chapter Six: Part Three

Younes chuckled. “Not so,” he said. “Not so. A monster he is, no failing that. Join with the tidy man? Mayhap he will—mayhap he will. And yet, something gives him pause,” Younes, sitting on the ground, no longer looked up, no longer seemed to talk to Kyouki or anyone else but himself. “Nay,” he went on, his voice getting steadily quieter so that it could hardly be heard over the wind outside the hollow. “Nay, for he has had a long hard time to think in the rushing sands—sands of time, yes. Iskander Younes is a hazard. No mistaking that, certain sure. That being so, why did they not kill him when a chance for it came to them? That’s a question that vexed him long, kept him quiet, left the canyon free of his wailing and cursing. That it did. His new mind never left it to rest, and Iskander Younes as he is to be seen now discovered a fair prize. He solved the riddle to his own liking, that and more. Yes, it’s so.” Younes rolled his eyes back to look at Kyouki. “You’ve an opinion that he should join your adventures, do you? But tell me, tidy man, what service can you to aid Iskander Younes in his vengeance? Can you answer me that?”

Kyouki paused before answering. Jarvela felt the sadness in him, seeping out like a mist. It was the kind of question he would not want to answer.

“I will not aid your vengeance, Younes,” Kyouki said.

Younes grinned. “Then Iskander Younes has no further use of you.”

The interview ended badly. Younes fled.

*

Thinking back on Younes, as they met in that canyon so many years earlier, Jarvela left Súthende in the company of his young friend, Tag Tegran. They rode due north through the hills to Kyouki no Uma’s house, a home to lost children like Jarvela till they could go into the world and stand vigil. The lost and the forgotten drew to Kyouki, learning of themselves, growing and training. They learned secrets of the world, locked in themselves. Over time, the urchins at Kyouki’s house blossomed and he sent them into the world to keep the peace—fighting monsters in shadow. The uneasy peace of the world would have long before been hotter had Kyouki’s Runagates not been prowling, though few knew it.

Jarvela had his message to carry to Kyouki: in the company of Digger, the Wiggend Lordling, Silk Golinvaux had gone into the hills near Súthende. Jarvela had been investigating Silk and his movements for months, using the networks of Runagates. Jarvela concluded that Silk had gone into the hills to meet with Iskander Younes, to join in their common purpose, though they had different reasons for meaning violence to the Warlord Engelkind. Younes had gone his farthest yet on his mission of revenge. He could be tracked through the movements of his less careful company.

“You’re awfully quiet, Jarvela,” Tag said in his deep voice, uncommonly thoughtful and even for a kid his age. He had dark hair straight as straw, and wise eyes with premature wrinkles around them. A hand rolled cigarette wobbled between his lips. Often his eyes stared into the distance even when he talked to someone three feet from him.

“I’d hope that Wexerly would join us on this road,” Jarvela said. “We’re riding to…” Jarvela groped for words.

“Death and ruin?” Tag suggested.

Jarvela shook his head, not to disagree but to say he didn’t know. “How do you feel about the future, Tag?”

Tag smiled around his cigarette. “It feels stormy, or nearly stormy. A pregnant frisson awaiting the first lightning strike.”

Jarvela frowned. He disagreed. He thought the first lightning had stricken somewhere, that they had missed it and awaited the thunder and the onslaught of a torrential rain.

He kicked his horse to a trot. Haste felt appropriate.

End of Chapter Six. Continued on February 7...