Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (19 page)

They nodded at each other, communicating silently.

Alys timed a break in the arrows and ran to the north side of the battlements. Joey headed south.

Below, a man standing nearby plucked Joey’s flaming arrow from the earth. He held it aloft for the boy with the bow, currently trying to loose another shot, to see. Laughing, the man tossed it to the ground at the base of his god’s flotilla.

The world turned to flame and noise and gore.

Alys was knocked from the battlements by the shockwave, as was Joey. Landing heavily on her backshe quickly sprang up to her feet again, ignoring the pain. Joey was also on his feet and climbing back to the battlements.

Below, ash and limbs and blood and fire had replaced thousands of killers and an esplanade of stone. Deep scars had been gouged through the cobbles where they’d trailed the gunpowder the night before. Blood flowed down towards The Mile, using the shallow trenches as guttering. A clear third of The Exalted had been killed, and many more maimed.

Somna, who’d been blasted against the gates of the Castle, was out of sight of the battlements and bellowing in rage.

His king, his god, caught at ground zero, was in pieces. The torso remained, head attached, mouth chewing at the air, trying to reach the shredded leg of one of Somna’s men a foot away.

Using its chin to drag and lever itself along the stones, the one-time footballer and god to Somna’s Exalted bit ferociously, tearing into the still-warm leg, satiating itself despite the damage done to its body. The burst football, which had been propelled upwards by the blast, flumped to the ground nearby.

Somna, still sprawled on his front, howled again.

“My King, oh my King.”

Alys gestured to the feeding King’s head. Joey smiled bitterly and put two arrows through the back of it.

Somna screamed, sounding like a deep-voiced infant, and sprinted towards the remains of his god, a troop of The Exalted moving up from The Mile to surround their leader.

“Let’s end this,” Alys said, jumping from the battlements and running to the main gates.
 

As they reached them and joined three hundred Rangers, James Kelly, Jennifer, Suzy Wheels and a dozen other seasoned fighters from each of the former communities, Alys punched Joey heavily on the shoulder.

“For luck,” she said, before turning towards the raising portcullis, face wiped blank, in the zone.

Joey didn’t respond but joined her there, slipping into the fighting mentality. Together they pushed out onto the Esplanade, the one o’clock gun thundering once more behind them.

Chapter 21

Joey

Moving through the gates, Joey skidded to a stop, holding back until the last of the fighters were outside.

“Gates. Now, Eleanor,” he yelled.

Moments later the heavy, wooden gates slammed closed, sealing the Castle. Joey heard the iron portcullis fall an instant later and stepped to his left, leaping onto the stonework of the Castle’s bridge.

Positioning himself behind some ironwork, Joey began firing arrows at those Exalted who looked to be getting the better of the Castle fighters. Headshots were the order of the day. Joey scanned, chose and fired, again and again, covering his comrades, clearing a path for those in front, protecting those who needed it. Thanks to the oil-drum filled with newly constructed arrows, he wouldn’t be running short of ammo. Most likely his arms, chest and shoulders would give out before the ammo did, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Joey had trained a lifetime for this moment. Thousands of hours spent practicing, perfecting, strengthening. He’d been born for this. His stamina the result of torturous, unending repetitions. His strength the product of will over muscle. His stubborn courage… a gift from his mother.

Leaping to the wall on his right, Joey resumed firing, sparing the occasional glance to check on Alys. She was the person he most needed to provide cover for but also the one person in their team of hardened fighters who didn’t need his protection.

She was a frighteningly beautiful tornado of violence, control, skill and strength. Whirling, stabbing, kicking and slashing from one enemy to the next, she was a deadly dancer, a fluid, unstoppable slash of death. Whoever named the fighting disciplines
the arts
must have fought like Alys Shephard. It was an art for her, a stunning performance of violence. Men and women fell, blood splashed onto the cobbles, bones shattered and limbs flew as she danced through the enemy lines.

Her mother’s Rangers moved with the same deadly purpose and efficiency also, accompanied by Jennifer, who, in her tighter, more violent fighting style, was a more brutal doppelganger of her daughter.

The Castle fighters were making best use of the confusion and fear left in the aftermath of the explosion, cutting through The Exalted’s killers swiftly, but the tribe were regaining their senses and beginning to surge forward, adding to their numbers from the trail of killers unharmed by the explosion who were still lined along The Royal Mile.

As The Exalted began to slow the forward momentum of the Castle fighters, a deep, reverberation, low in volume but familiar and building in intensity, began to distract both sides. Somna, face streaked with tears of grief and rage, mounted the battering ram which had reached the frontlines. Standing atop the heavy ram, he screamed at his people.

“Push. Push everyone forward.”

The Castle’s defenders began to die. Pushed back by the recovering enemy’s numbers, they backpedalled and fought on the run.

Joey continued to fire arrows, sending one straight at Somna’s lidless left eye. He batted it away contemptuously with a large blade. The canon thundered again in the background. The thrumming noise grew in intensity and made the hairs on Joey’s neck stand on end.

He cut a glance at Alys, who’d spun away from the body of her most recent opponent and rejoined the retreating line of fighters being pushed back to the gates.

Joey’s eyes were wide, trying desperately to communicate with her across the sea of people and death. She nodded once. She had heard it too.

Strafing the three-metre gap that had formed between enemies, Alys pushed her fighters forward.

Joey’s heart lurched sideways in his chest. It was madness. Pushing forwards against an enemy who so badly outnumbered them. It was a strategy they’d agreed on,
when the time came
. When the gamble would either pay off or they would die, right here, along with everyone else inside the Castle. Nothing won, Fraser unpunished, their deaths and lives just another outstanding piece of entertainment for the UKBC.

Watching his opponents throw themselves at his advancing tribe, Somna cried out, “End this. For your king!” He pointed the tip of his blade at his fallen idol.

Then the screaming started.

Hardened, seasoned killers who’d torn through the south of the city, killing indiscriminately for years. Young, old, good, evil, they’d sent all of them to the grave or fed them to their King. Men and women who believed with every fibre of their being that their way was
the
way. That their god demanded blood and that life was a sin.

An army of killers screamed like newborns as a hundred thousand Ringed, drawn by the regular boom of the one o’clock gun, descended upon them.

Tooth and nail, hand and jaw, they tore, bit, shredded, clawed and consumed a path through the sea of killers. Parting with the onslaught, the rear guard became unnerved
 
and pressed back into the main section of Somna’s army. Every face of The Exalted tribe succumbed to gravity, dropping at the unreal wave of violence, of death roaring towards them as an unstoppable hurricane of the walking dead tore through their ranks. Killers used to being feared blanched as the cold terror turned its face to them. No longer the predators. No longer the superior force. No longer the most vicious, unrelenting force in the city, they reacted the only way they could: panic.

Some pushed their brothers and sisters in front of them into the force coming at them. Some soiled themselves and froze, only to be taken, torn apart, by a group of Ringed who showed them what real killing was all about. Most of them surged towards the advancing legion of Ringed, abandoning themselves with gusto to the thrill of battle, the
good death
they’d dreamed of. A few, very few, sank to their knees and begged forgiveness from a God they’d forsaken to survive in a city ruled by monsters. They spread their arms in penitence as the Ringed pulled their organs from them.

One hundred thousand eternally-hungry mouths attacked the hot, sweet meat presented to them and consumed the arrogant expectation of victory, decimating The Exalted’s ranks in minutes.

Finally, the cruellest, most vicious killers organised themselves and formed lines of defence. They fought in groups of three lines, spread across the width of the Esplanade – the Roman method. As The Ringed crashed against the first line and were impaled or silenced on their swords and knives, the second line of fresh men stepped in. The next wave dealt with, and then the next. Gradually The Ringed were reduced in number, but only a few at a time.

Each wave of the dead took a dozen of The Exalted. With eternal patience and limitless stamina they hammered rhythmically against their enemy who, despite tactics, were feeling the fatigue of battle. The Ringed were not. Their numbers seemed as infinite as their hunger. They kept coming.

Somna organised his troops and threw line after line at The Ringed, whilst defending his rear from the Castle fighters, now barely a dozen remaining. Most of Somna’s closest allies were dead, the men and women still surrounding him badly shaken and distracted by the coming tide of The Ringed.

Seeing a chance to end Somna’s reign, Jennifer surged forward, stepping out from the gates onto the opening of the Esplanade. Stopping several feet from Somna, she spat at the ground in front of him. Raising her knives, she invited the killer to join her in a dance.

Somna’s eyes slid over her body, assessing her. Joey could see from his vantage point on the wall that Somna had no fear of her. He looked her over and calmly slipped a little white bottle from his pocket. Tilting his head back, Somna let a few drops of liquid fall into his eyes and gave her a predatory smile.

James Kelly and Alys moved past Joey to the edge of the Esplanade. They obviously wanted to join the fight, but Jennifer signalled them to stand down. She wanted to put the monster down alone.

Somna drew two blades from his belt and walked towards Jennifer. Unhurried, he had begun to recover from the death of his king. He appeared only mildly interested in and completely unconcerned by his opponent. The way he moved gave Joey the creeps. Close up, he looked strong, incredibly tall, and he possessed the coolness of one who had made killing a sport.

He moved. For such a large, heavily-muscled man he demonstrated impossible speed, delivering a slicing right-handed thrust at Jennifer’s thigh. She saw it for the feint it was and removed her leg, just a slide of a millimetre to the right, but enough to avoid his stab and confidently swipe aside his plunging back-handed stab at her face.

Only when the uppercut to her torso landed did Jennifer fully appreciate the huge man’s speed and the genius of his double-feint. His true strike delivered a five-inch blade into her lower abdomen, glancing her right kidney. Two seconds had passed.
 

The pain was excruciating. Jennifer fell to her knees, Somna’s blade still embedded in her body. He kicked her hard on the chest, sending her tumbling and sliding across the cobbles to come to rest at her daughter’s feet.

Alys took a single second to snarl at James.

“See to her.”

Long enough for Somna to allow a bitter smile to crease his horrific face and for Joey to come to her side.

Somna’s voice was quiet, calm. “That’s the best you have? One wiry old woman?”

He made a
pffft
sound through his teeth and moved his shark-like eyes over Alys. Finally he faced James Kelly.

“Children? This is what you’ve betrayed your master for, Jimmy?”

Sliding another knife from its sheath on his back, Somna raised his eyebrows in mock amusement.

“All you’re missing is your friend Bracha.”

Alys and Joey stepped forward as one. Joey threw him Jock’s favourite line, but there was no humour in it.

“Are you gonnae bark all day?”

Somna gave a mocking bow, more a tilt of his head.

“As you wish, young man.”