ARC: The Corpse-Rat King (8 page)

The mule, unaware of how good the plan was, chose that moment to stop. Marius blinked, then did so again when he saw the shaft of an arrow sticking out of the beast’s neck. He stared stupidly at it for a moment, long enough for something to whizz out of the nearby brushes and thud into his chest. Marius rocked back in his seat, staring down at a matching shaft that now protruded from his torso.

“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.

Foolish men, such as those who never have to leave a city, will tell you that the walls surrounding it, and the guards who man them, exist to defend the city from its enemies – to provide a barrier between the riches within and the covetous, barbarian masses without. Wise men know that this is nonsense. Walls exist to contain gates, and soldiers exist that they may stand next to those gates and demand tribute from anyone wishing to enter. Outsiders desire entrance, guards exact a levee, and then spend it on booze, women and gambling. If they’re good, Gods-fearing men. If not, well, there are a million ways to part a guard and his money, and not all of them have to be approved by a majority of the churches to be fun. Thus the economy is kept vibrant, money moves in the right directions, taxes are manageable, and the whole system runs along as smoothly as a slaughterhouse production line. The
truly
wise, amongst whom you can count guards, guards’ mistresses and those who didn’t learn their lesson the first time they tried to get into a city, know the truth: there
are
a million ways to part a guard and his money, so to a guard, money is a useless and transitory thing. If you really want to get into a city unscathed, that is, with your belongings intact and all those special little items you’ve secreted about yourself in the hope the authorities won’t go searching for them, you need to know what your gatekeepers
really
want. There are as many desires as there are guards to a gate, and the only way to know which one is the most appropriate is to find a good vantage point, pull up a piece of ground, and watch a while.

It is said that the dead are infinitely patient, although it is usually said by the living, and how would they know? Perhaps they are, but only if they have nowhere to be, and nothing to be running from. Marius knew how to be patient. It was part of his craft. Even so, the hours chafed. It was mid-morning when he took his seat. By the time those passing him drew lunches from capes and carts and settled in to eat, his eyes were itching. Still he sat, eyes fixed upon the gate ahead. Carts arrived, arguments took place, and tolls were handed over. Marius paid no attention to them. What was important to him came afterwards, once each supplicant had passed through the gate and the guards were left with whatever bounty they had taken. He watched as lunch came and went, and the afternoon was spent one trudging step after another, one petulant transaction upon the next. The sun began its lazy descent behind the spires and towers of the city, and still he did not move. Shadows became puddles of black, then pools, then one large ocean that stretched from city to hill and up into the sky. The city bells rang for day’s end, then final prayer. Torches were lit along the final approach to the city and over each gate along the wall, and still Marius sat unmoving. On the road around him, groups of travellers, deciding that one more night could stand between them and the attempt to find lodgings, drew their carts to the edge of the road and climbed inside, or nestled in whatever hollow they could find in the gloom, and drew cloaks over their faces. Marius watched a final few enter the city, and then, though the gates still stood open to receive guests, he watched the guards make ready for the long, empty hours of the night. Only then, when it was clear to him what the men at the gates prized most dearly, did he allow himself a small laugh. He stood and listened to the mumbling crowd along the road. Then he set off into the deep darkness, away from the campfires, to make ready.

It is commonly believed that an army marches on its stomach, like some million-headed snail. Marius had been in an army, once, for about six weeks. Long enough to learn the whereabouts of the regimental pay supplies, and separate them from those who expected to be paid. He had learned many things during that time, chief among them being how far into the mountains he needed to run before he was safe from execution. But he also knew that it is not the stomach which is the most important aspect of a soldier’s existence. Any spear carrier with decent enough cunning and a sympathetic sergeant can find a meal. What a soldier truly prizes, and considers the greatest skill to be acquired, is sleep. Not sleep as you and I understand it, in a bed, perhaps even in our own homestead, with a cuddly wife or acrobatic mistress besides us. But sleep in the rain, sleep on a mountain pass with hateful foreigners in the rocks above and a two hundred foot fall below, sleep while the legs still march and the ears still hear orders. Sleep, standing at an open gate with a rich, under-defended city at your back. Sleep, undiscovered.

A sergeant may be sympathetic to many things, but sleeping on duty will never be one of them.

An hour after Marius left his position on the hillock above the final approach he shuffled the last few steps to the mouth of the city gate.

“Hello, lads.”

Twenty minutes amongst sleeping travellers had transformed him. Calfskin gloves covered his hands, and the worn-out shoes he had been wearing since the turn of the year were gone, replaced by a pair of sturdy leather hiking boots that looked as if they had only just embarked upon their first journey. His travel-worn clothes, and more importantly, the nature of his features, lay hidden deep in the folds of a hooded oilskin cape. A thick knobkerrie completed the ensemble, and Marius leant upon it as if it were a cane, surveying the hooded eyes of the guards. He suppressed a smile. Nobody likes being disturbed from dozing, particularly if they’re being disturbed in order to work.

“Gate’s closed for the evening.”

“Looks open to me,” Behind the guards, two wooden doors, twice the height of a man, thick and unadorned and of rough construction, stood open. A corridor the thickness of the wall above, perhaps ten feet in all, led into a short square. Marius could see an open hole in the roof of the corridor. Breach the doors, and the pot that undoubtedly stood above them could pour boiling oil directly onto you before you made the open plaza. Nasty stuff, but a city will do whatever it can to protect the dignity of its Gods-fearing mothers and pure virgin daughters, even if nobody can remember having met one. He tilted his head to indicate the open passage, grunting slightly as he did so, and leaned further onto his support, shuffling forward a step in the process.