Farlander (60 page)

It was a primal shout, like nothing Nico had ever heard before, like nothing he would ever have thought possible from a human throat. It was shaped and directed with such commanding force that Ash’s attacker was stunned for a moment, and dropped the weapon clean from his hand as though it had turned red hot.

It was enough to give Ash the second that he needed to jump up and grab the only loose furniture in the small room. A chair. He swung it full-force into the Acolyte’s face. Bones cracked behind the mask, and the man reeled backwards into those trying to push in from behind. The farlander charged into him, shoved them all back, with his own momentum, through the doorway. Somehow he got the door closed against their weight. He rammed his back against it, holding it shut.

‘Nico . . .’ he said with a measure of coolness that frightened Nico more than calmed him. ‘Throw me a coin, boy, quickly now.’ And he jerked his head to the washbasin, now out of his reach, where they kept the change needed to feed the room’s various coinslots.

Nico scrambled down from his bunk as Ash fought with the door, which shook violently and tried to jerk him out of its way. ‘
Hurry
,’ Ash hissed.

Nico reached the basin. He fumbled for a coin, not seeing any, and suddenly he feared he had already used their last – but no, his fingers found one where his eyes had not, and he plucked it up, tossing it to Ash.

Ash caught it in one hand and in the same motion twisted and dropped it through the slot on the doorframe. He turned the key, and relaxed his stance only slightly as the lock clicked into place; hammering could be heard against the quivering wood, and Ash still pressed himself against it, clearly not trusting much to the lock’s strength.

Nico took a pace towards him, then turned and took a step towards the shuttered window instead. He stopped there, paralysed with indecision.

Ash frowned at him just as an axe blade cut through the door beside the old man’s head, spitting a shower of bright splinters. ‘The window, boy. The window!’

Nico didn’t have to be told twice. It was their only way out. He rushed over and pushed at the shutters . . . except they didn’t open, and refused to budge in his hands. They required a coin.

Nico cursed as he again fished in the sink for another one, though this time he knew he had used them all.

He turned to Ash blindly, wringing his hands, too panicked to think straight.

‘The purse!’ Ash hollered. ‘
There! On the bed!
’

Sure enough, when Nico fumbled open the purse he found a quarter amongst the other coins, and he took it to the coinslot, and tried inserting it with shaking fingers into the hole; but then he fumbled and dropped it, and had to chase after the thing as it rolled back across the room all the way to Ash’s feet.

Ash shouted something he didn’t hear. Nico scooped up the coin and returned to the window frame. His aim was truer this time and the quarter rattled out of sight. Nico forced the shutters open. He took a vigorous breath of air. Outside it was dark and thick with fog. He stuck his head out to look down at the alley some four floors below. He couldn’t see any way down, no fire escapes or nearby drainpipes.

‘We’re trapped!’ he cried, and leaned his head back inside just as something shattered against the frame. He stared at the broken end of a crossbow bolt as it clattered off the sill. Someone was shooting down at him from the opposite roof.

Nico scrambled back from the window.

Ash was shouting something about making a jump for it to the window opposite. The window in question was shuttered closed – and in a building a good seven feet away. Nico knew he would never have it in him to try such a leap.

‘
Nico!
’ roared his master, and Nico looked back to see the door was beginning to come apart around him, the axe blade chopping the planking loose.

He regained his feet, discovered that he had grabbed the fallen chair in his hands. He ran for the window and tossed the chair out into the night. The fog swirled in its wake as it crashed against the shutters on the opposite side. ‘Open up,’ he yelled after it, hanging back cautiously from the window. ‘Open up!’

The shutters parted just enough for a face to peer out. Nico saw an old man squinting across at him. It was the same old fellow he had seen on his first day here, constructing things from matchsticks.

‘Please,’ Nico shouted. He snatched up the money purse. With a heave, he tossed it across the alley and in between the shutters into the old man’s room. ‘Take it!’ he told him.

The shutters closed firmly once more. Nico almost sobbed, though, in truth, part of him was greatly relieved. Another crossbow bolt shattered the frame an inch away from his hand. He darted further back into the room.

Suddenly the opposite shutters opened wide. The old man grinned a toothless grin and beckoned with one hand. Then shuffled aside to make room.

Nico’s stomach dropped away. He thought of making that leap. It brought memories of his fall back in Bar-Khos, when he had pitched from the roof of the taverna. It was not the fall itself he recalled so vividly, because he had never been able to remember it much; it was the moment before he fell, when he had slid towards the edge and then hung there for an instant, scrabbling for a hold that never came to hand.

He could see Acolytes’ masks through the widening gaps in the door now, and Ash risking his neck with every chop of the axe that came through it.

‘I can’t do it,’ Nico told him.

Ash said nothing for a moment but, with the deepest understanding, he glowered. ‘Our blades then. Throw our blades across.’

Nico frowned, but he did as he was bidden. He turned his back and scrabbled under the bed for their weapons, dragging the canvas rolls out into the light. He made for the window and tossed them across to the room opposite.

He failed to hear Ash approach from behind – the destruction of the door was too loud for that. It was a surprise then when the old man dragged him from the window back towards the door, or what was left of it, and even more of a surprise when he picked Nico up by the seat of his pants and the scruff of his neck. He growled some farlander words of encouragement and charged for the window, with Nico yelling and flapping his arms as Ash swung him hard and sent him sailing out into clear space.

Nico arced across the alleyway. For an instant, he even thought he was going to make it.

He didn’t. The opposite window rose away from him before he could reach it, and all of a sudden there he was again, back in that nightmare moment he had feared most of all, falling fast to his death.

This time though, with sweet mercy, his outstretched hands clipped against something and managed to grab hold. It was the jutting windowsill, and he swung with a hard shock into the wall, and hung there by his fingertips, his bare toes scrabbling for a purchase against the coarse brickwork.

He glimpsed Ash leaping across the same space above his head, his cloak flapping as a flying bolt just missed him, diving headfirst into the room. And then he was there at the window, yanking Nico up and inside.

Nico lay panting on the floor. The old match man leered down at him, his gums chopping in excitement, as he sat on a bunk beside a replica ranch house built of matchsticks – and entirely ignored by Ash, as the R
shun kicked open the canvas roll to unfold across the floor, before he yanked out their two sheathed blades. He tossed Nico his sword as he struggled up from the floor, levelled his own just as the first Acolyte leapt through the window behind them.

Ash shoved Nico out of the way, and ducked a fast swipe aimed at his neck. He thrust his blade through the Acolyte’s belly, in and out, as quick as that. He kicked the man out of the way and lunged at another white-robed assailant, even as he, too, was leaping through. This one fared better. He batted Ash’s blade aside with one hand, forcing him to swerve from a return jab to the face.

They struck and parried in a fast exchange, blades scraping and ringing, scattering Nico and the old match man towards the door of the small room, and destroying the furniture all around them in their frenzy. Remarkably, the matchstick ranch house remained untouched.

Nico struggled for the door of the room and pulled it open. He had to get out of there.

He stumbled out into a dark corridor with his blade drawn. Ash knocked into him, stepping backwards through the doorway too, still fending off the Acolyte. A quick glance showed more of the attackers leaping across and into the room. The toothless old man was sitting back out of their way, clapping his hands with glee.

Nico ran off along the corridor, Ash close on his heels. A startled face at a doorway; another door slammed shut; a stairwell leading up and down. Nico leapt down the stairs, three steps at a time. He hooked his hand on the banister and swung himself around each turn, down one floor after another until at last he had reached the bottom. He could see his way to the front door at the end of a long hallway.

Ash grabbed him as he fled towards it. The old farlander jerked him back, pushed him in the opposite direction while white flashes came flying down the stairwell they had just left.

Washrooms, dirty sinks and scrubbing boards for clothes and a harsh smell of starch in the air; he could hear the whine of his own breath in his throat, the slap of his bare soles against the tiled floor as he turned this way and that; a moment of elation, a gaslight on the wall illuminating the back door of the building, and then Nico went bursting through it into a fog-filled night – and into a sudden eruption of noise.

Chips of stone flew all around him. He stood fixed to the spot, unsure of what was happening, or why his ears pounded under a quick succession of deafening cracks. And then he realized he was being fired upon by a great number of rifles. More rifles than he had ever heard before.

He would have been perforated with shots if Ash had not tripped him and sent him sprawling to the ground. They both crawled out into the deep fog, well away from the light spilling from the doorway. The fog obscured them from sight as shots whipped above their scalps. Behind them, the pursuing Acolytes hung back inside the doorway of the building, not risking themselves to the maintained volleys of fire from their colleagues. Ash and Nico crawled along the street. Nico did not even feel the pain of its rough surface in his knees and elbows. When they were far enough away Ash tugged him up on to shaky legs, holding firmly to his arm.

They made a run for it. There weren’t any street lights here, but still someone spotted them. Shouts rang out, and then the sounds of pursuit.

A shape challenged them from ahead, but fell in silence at a slash from Ash’s blade. Nico leapt the body, not giving it a second thought. More shapes, and Ash flicked out with his sword again, never slowing in his stride. Nico had dropped his own blade somewhere along the way. He didn’t care. A flyer passed overhead, just above the rooftops, black and fast enough to be seen through the fog, circling the immediate district.

The entire area appeared to be surrounded and they could spot movement whenever they passed better-lit streets than this one. As they came to a T-junction opening into a well-lit thoroughfare, the sound of firing brought them to a halt. They ducked back, seeing both ends blocked off.

Nico cowered against a wall, trying to find a hiding space that was not there. At every shot fired, his body tensed in expectation of instant pain. Ash pulled him roughly out into the street. They crossed it moving as low and fast as they could. Cries from both ends betrayed the occasional victims of friendly fire.

A building ahead, squat and uglier than most in this city. Its doorway was without a door, black as night. They fell through it into a stinking space without light, sparks flying and chips of stone raining down from the outer edges of the doorway behind them.

They stumbled deeper inside, the dimly seen walls covered in the faint impressions of graffiti. It was a public latrine, with a row of privy holes ranged against one wall.

Ash strode to the rear of the small building, where a few grimy narrow windows ran high up along the back wall. He smashed one with the hilt of his sword, cleared away the jagged edges.

‘We must split up, boy. I am much faster on my own. If you hide I can lead them away from you.’

Nico cast a glance about him. ‘Hide? Where?’

Ash swept his gaze along the row of privy holes, in a single wooden bench covered with dubious stains. The old man tugged at it till he had wrenched the bench up from its mounting. The smell was enough to make him gag. Beside him, Nico began to retch.