Sharfy looked stricken. ‘Get down, now! Down to the roadside. If we stay here he’ll get us killed.’
It was a steep drop down the embankment and they had to slide most of the way. The guards below had their board game sprayed with rubble. They stood and drew their blades as Kiown made it back through the tunnel at a mad sprint, whooping. He plunged right down the drop towards Eric and Sharfy. ‘Here they come!’ he screamed. ‘I threw rocks! They’re coming! Raid! Plunder! Go go!’
The guards jogged over, yelling orders lost in the rumbling of the goods train. ‘Forget us,’ Kiown told them, pointing overhead. ‘Look up there. I suggest you panic.’
Five of the red-skinned pit devils loped out, jaws open wide as they went heedlessly down the drop, two overbalancing and sprawling to the roadside with a thud. The surprised guards screamed for help. The men in grey robes shrieked and leaped from the carts’ platforms. More guards rushed over, no longer interested in the bandits. ‘Go! Loot!’ Kiown yelled, hopping up on the side of a passing cart.
Behind them, the guards tried to stand in formation while the devils frenzied. They had loped along slowly, but their long thin limbs now thrashed like striking snakes, claws slicing through armour. The guards fell screaming, with breastplates cracked open, arms sliced off still clutching swords. Their frenzy mounting, the pit devils swarmed over grain carts, chewing and swiping at the carts themselves.
Up on the side of the ‘dirt cart’, Sharfy and Kiown stuffed their pockets with what appeared to be hard lumps of black soil. Urgent to make room, Sharfy took the gun’s clips from his pocket and tossed them clattering to the ground. Eric rushed to pick them up, unnoticed by the others.
‘Take some!’ Sharfy called to him and tossed a few pieces down, one of which broke apart. Gleaming gems scattered left and right. Only they weren’t gems — they were flat as coins.
Kiown dropped down beside him, still panting from his sprint. Eric hesitated, not yet quite knowing his place among these bandits. Would a hero just go along with this? he thought, and said, ‘Whatever these things are, these scales, are they worth killing people for?’
Kiown blinked at him, baffled. ‘Killing people, you say?’ he laughed. ‘Poor little innocents? Those guards, they work for the castle.’ Kiown suddenly loomed over him, a hint of anger behind his mocking face and voice. ‘Did you think the war mages were little innocents, too? I hear they killed your people dead without a thought. Know who the war mages work for?’
‘The castle,’ said Sharfy, hopping down with his pockets bulging.
‘How does one treat enemies in Otherworld?’ Kiown went on, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Does one politely discuss?’
‘Enough!’ Sharfy said, standing between them. He pointed at the clumps of black dirt at Eric’s feet. ‘Grab some, quick. Then run.’
Eric did as told, and they ducked through the gap between two grain carts, up the far embankment, along a ledge where more small passageways opened up. No guards chased, not when they saw the entire horde of pit devils belatedly pouring through the hole on the other side like a red nightmare, swarming down the embankment. ‘Anfen says hello!’ Kiown yelled, waving to one guard who paused, looking up at them. The guard stared, but made no move to pursue them as they fled.
15
Through the wide hallways Case went. Bright and busy the place seemed, well ordered as a hospital. The human traffic was heavy enough that his footsteps need not be silent, but he was careful to sidestep the men and women in their bland robes, with their bland faces showing not much, saying nothing. When they did speak, it was seldom loud enough to be overheard, seldom more than a word or two. Some had paper scrolls in hand, or little notebooks slung about their shoulders. Many ducked in or out of the doorways on either side, all steadily going about some incomprehensible business like ants in a stump. There seemed something very wrong with them which Case couldn’t quite pinpoint: something was missing. Maybe it was the way their mouths hung open a little, the dullness of their eyes. Maybe it was the place’s quiet despite so many going back and forth, with only the tap shuffle tap of footsteps on the stone floor.
Sometimes the doors on either side of the wide hallways were open. Case paused to look in, once finding a store room full of plain-looking objects: cups, plates, tools, simple jewellery like the silver beads around his neck. It was all valuable, since there were serious-looking men with swords sitting inside, silently watching over it all.
In other rooms, seated around tables, were people who by their manner discussed matters of grave importance. Something separated these people from the rest of these castle dwellers. They were dressed differently, but that wasn’t it … there was clearly some ‘on’ switch that had been flicked in them, or maybe the others had been switched off. Case passed several such meetings before he stopped in a doorway to listen, thinking that in here might be the man he was supposed to find:
‘… if I may, to me, this is … I won’t say paranoid, but I have not ever detected a scrap of further ambition in that general than the next course of dinner.’
The others at the table exchanged looks of grave alarm. Said one very slowly, ‘Perhaps others have better foresight than we.’
The first speaker, stricken: ‘Yes, of course. I did not mean to say I was questioning-’
‘You already have questioned. Already questioned.’ He grinned like someone who was very much looking forward to a drink of the other’s blood.
Case listened a while longer then left the worried-looking bunch to their troubles and secrets. Further along, an open door blasted freezing air and mist into the hall. Inside was a spacious chamber, and placed over its floor were many large lumps of blue ice. Shapes were frozen within each block and, if he didn’t know better — yes, there were people in the ice blocks, horned men, identical to that monster that had set itself on fire, back near the door. The chamber was full of them, all frozen solid, their eyes open. Were they alive or dead? He couldn’t tell.
A block of ice nearest the door had water running from it in little rivulets, slowly thawing. The war mage inside had its eyes pointed right at the doorway where Case stood. He shuddered then hurried away, soon as thoroughly lost as could be.
It was endless, this maze of hallways and arches and doors to secret chambers. When one passage branched off, winding upwards, Case followed its plush red carpet, recalling that Aziel had seemed to direct her mournful cries to a higher window. The top of the steps was guarded by sentries, heavily armed with shields and spears, but they didn’t react in the slightest as Case very carefully crept past them.
He found himself in a lofty hallway without the background sound of shuffling steps to shield his own. Tall glass windows double a man’s height were embedded at intervals down either side. Before each of these sat people taking careful notes on paper scrolls with pencils. The windows looked out, but Case assumed they were televisions or something similar, for they didn’t show the sky, nor the landscape he’d expect to see from this high up. The one nearest seemed to give the view from in the midst of a town; there were buildings in the background, and what might have been a pub. In the next window along, women in rags walked by a marketplace carting a wagon full of hay, which kept spilling out, and which a young boy kept trying to put back in.
Some of the windows showed grassy fields where nothing seemed to be happening at all, besides a little breeze. But the window-watchers stared at these just as avidly, taking as many notes as those monitoring the others. Case looked over their shoulders but couldn’t decipher anything … if he spoke their language now, he sure as shit couldn’t read it.
In another window was what looked like a big looming wall of glassy ice, its top too far above to see. In fact, many windows — Case counted thirty as he strolled along — viewed this looming wall, which seemed to stretch to the sky itself. It was either vastly long, or there were several of its kind, for some windows watched it from grassy plains, others from between the trees of a woodland, others from fields of dust and rubble. Before some of these were huge grey statues with round featureless faces, tall as buildings.