Landfall: Tales From the Flood/Ark Universe (7 page)

‘Oh, yes. We can prove it.
It’s happened before.
Not once but many times. You can see it in the rocks. Your wife told us she was making for a formation called the Reef, didn’t she? According to the Founders’ own records the Reef is the remains of a city, a Dead city, buried in the rock. You could see where the city had been – a thousand years of history, of building - and then the marks of the inundation - and then
nothing
, Speaker, nothing but layer upon layer of rock and the remains of burrowing purple things. That city never recovered. Even the people who built it have vanished, Speaker. Maybe they could not recover their culture, as all the metals and fuels were gone. Maybe another tilt wiped them out altogether. Or maybe they simply left this world for a better one, as the Founders left Earth.

‘We owe it to our descendants that cities like Orklund do not suffer the same fate.’ He grabbed Thom’s arm. ‘There’s still time to start, even this year. I know you fear for your wife. But she’s not coming home this year, if she ever comes home at all. Make your decision, Speaker. Let me build my Library. Let me save civilisation.’

VII

His name, he said, was Eykyn. Some kind of grease covered his face, to keep out the wind, and his hair was a nest of ropy lanks. Bundled up in what looked like layers of rabbit fur, it was impossible to tell how old he was.
 

Eykyn’s home was a mound, already covered thick with snow. The entrance was a dark hole without even a proper door, just a plug of wood and grass that could be forced in, a bung to keep out the cold. It was clear that the main part of the dwelling was deep underground, deep enough that the frost could not reach.
 

Xaia, Teif, Manda and Chan faced Eykyn, cold to the bones, wary, exhausted. The ground was already frozen, encased under layers of snow. They couldn’t survive out here. But that door was like a mouth, Xaia thought uneasily, a mouth in the earth that would swallow them all up. She felt deeply reluctant to enter.

Eykyn smiled, showing blackened, gappy teeth. ‘You are welcome,’ he said, gesturing. His accent was something like that of Ararat, much thicker, distorted. ‘People are scattered pretty thin up here, and hunker down in the coldfall. We have food.’

Teif, his cloak pulled around him, scowled. ‘What kind of food?’

‘Rabbit. Other stuff. You’ll see.’

‘And you’ll share it with us, will you?’ Manda said. ‘A bunch of people who just walked up out of nowhere.’

‘People are scattered thin,’ he said again. ‘Have to help each other. Otherwise none survive.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Manda said. Lacking Teif’s mass, the cold had got to her more and she was shivering. ‘Living like animals in the hole in the ground. What kind of people are they?’

‘Living people,’ Chan said, his own teeth chattering. ‘Surviving. It’s a rational strategy. Even given the depths of coldwinter, the season is so brief that the frost can’t penetrate too deeply into the ground.’

‘I say we leave this ball of grease to his pit,’ Manda said. ‘I don’t like the look of him.’

‘I don’t like the look of
you
,’ Teif said. ‘I don’t see what choice we have.’

‘We build our own shelter. Blocks of snow. We don’t need him.’

‘The sun’s nearly gone,’ Chan said. ‘We left it too late.’

Xaia looked up at a lid of cloud. A flurry of snow came in on the wind, the flakes needle-sharp where they hit her cheeks.

Chan was right. He usually was. They had left it too late. It was October now, they were deep into the coldfall, and the days seemed to get markedly shorter, one after the next. The ships were having to stand further off the coast because of the gathering pack ice, and Teif had lost several crew to frostbite and hypothermia already. To show leadership Xaia had undertaken the last few scouting trips into the land’s frozen interior herself, she and her lieutenants, searching for evidence of the City of the Living Dead. But today, not for the first time, they had got their timing wrong, and as the night’s cold clamped down they had got themselves stranded far from the coast.

And here was this man, this Eykyn, offering them shelter.

She murmured. ‘We’re all armed. We’re none of us fools. We take what we need from this man; we take no risks. All right?’

‘I don’t like it,’ Manda said again.

‘We have no choice,’ Chan said bluntly.

‘Discussion over,’ Xaia snapped. She led the way forward.
 

Eykyn’s grin widened, and he stuck out his hand. She forced herself to shake it. Then she followed him into the mouth-like door of his shelter.

Eykyn was shorter than she was, short and round, maybe an adaptation to the cold. She had to duck to follow him down the sharply-sloping tunnel.
 

The walls were frozen and slick to the touch. The only light came from scattered lamps in alcoves dug into the wall, lamps that burned something smoky and stinking, perhaps animal fat. Down she clambered, deeper and deeper. It was like a nightmare, the enclosing walls and roof, the hunched form of the man going before her, the harsh breaths of her companions as they followed, all of it visible only in shards and shadowed glimpses.
 

She had no idea how deep they had descended before the tunnel opened out into a wider chamber. She stepped out onto a floor of hard-trampled earth – trampled but not frozen. Her companions followed her, Teif straightening stiffly.
 

More oil lamps revealed a dome-shaped chamber, a dozen paces across, maybe more. The ceiling was coated with a kind of thatch. A fire, banked up, glowed in the middle of the floor. Possessions were scattered around, heaps of skin, animal bones. More people huddled warily by the far wall, men, women, children like balls of fur with wide eyes; the light was too uncertain to be able to see clearly.

Eykyn stood proudly.

Teif flared his broad nostrils. ‘Stinks like a toilet.’

‘You’re none too fragrant yourself,’ Xaia murmured.

Manda was loosening her outer layer of clothing. ‘It’s not cold.’

‘I told you,’ Chan said. ‘Go deep enough and it never gets too cold – or too hot. Look – see the tree roots in that wall? Trees from Earth are adapting to survive, growing deep roots down beneath the frost, so their sap flows through the winter.’ He glanced around. ‘There are elements of design. The thatch must soak up the fire’s smoke. And the fire itself is banked and air-starved so it burns slowly. See the way the lamps flicker? There must be passages for the circulation of the air …’

Xaia saw a heap of bones in one corner, stacked as if precious. Big bones, maybe from horse or cattle.

Eykyn gestured at heaps of straw. ‘Summer grass. Beds. Eat, sleep, drink.’ He beckoned, and a couple of the older children came over with earthen plates piled with meat. One brighter-looking little girl was almost pretty, under the grease, and her hair was plaited. She smiled at Xaia.

Xaia took a plate from the girl and bit into a chunk of meat. ‘Rabbit. It tastes fresh. I mean, not salted or dried.’

‘So it is,’ Eykyn said.
 

Teif growled, ‘How can you find fresh rabbit at this time of year?’

‘We know where they hibernate. Big burrows in the ground.’ He pointed. ‘We have tunnels. We don’t even go up top. And we have the flesh of the horses and cattle from the herds that pass at the equinoxes. Dried, salted. We have dried fruit, wheat, the harvest from the spring and autumn.’

‘How many are you?’ Teif growled.

‘Not many. You can see.’

‘Why live here?’ Manda said. ‘Why raise your children in a hole in the ground?’

‘Our forefathers came here to get away from the cities. This is our land, our place. Our way.’
 

‘It is a remarkable feat of adaptation,’ Chan said.

Eykyn eyed Xaia. ‘You’re far from home.’

‘I’m seeking the City of the Living Dead.’

Eykyn shrugged.
 

Xaia said, ‘If it exists, it’s north of here. Do you know how far north?’

‘Couldn’t say. Never been there. Never met anybody who has.’

‘Do you believe it exists?’

‘Couldn’t say.’

Chan asked, ‘How many live like this, further north yet?’

‘Couldn’t say. None, so far as I know.’
 

Teif asked, ‘Do you think it’s worth going on, hunting the City?’

He smiled that broken smile. ‘If you do, come back this way. We’ll make you welcome.’ He held out the meat plates. ‘Look, do you want this or not?’

So they ate, and washed their faces in the meltwater that trickled from a pipe in the wall, and, self-conscious, used the corner of the dwelling marked out as a lavatory. The natives stayed away, though the children brought them more food.
 

To some unspoken signal, Eykyn and his people retreated to their own heaps of straw and fur.
 

It was a relief for Xaia to spread out her cloak on her pile of dry summer straw, and ease her boots off and tend to her feet, rubbing the sore patches and work at calluses and blisters; mercifully she was still free of frostbite. She found she couldn’t bear to have the rabbit-fur blankets Eykyn had given them anywhere near her body. She made a pile of her own clothes and burrowed into it.
 

The whole chamber was like a nest, full of breaths, sighs, farts, the rustling of straw as adults and children tried to get comfortable. Perhaps she slept.

‘They are like animals.’
 

The whisper, soft in her ear, startled her awake. There was a mass in the bed with her, warm, heavy. She reached for her blade, under the heaped jacket she was using as a pillow.

A hand touched her bare shoulder, a callused palm. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Manda? What the hell?’

Manda kneaded her shoulder, her hand strong. She was behind Xaia, and snuggled closer; Xaia felt the pressure of her belly against her back, her knees in the crook of her own. ‘I was cold. Couldn’t bear those piss-soaked furs.’

‘No.’ Xaia laughed softly. ‘Nor I. Stay, then.’

Manda’s hand slid down Xaia’s arm, caressing.

Xaia came even wider awake. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Do you ever feel as if you are the only human beings in the world? You and I, Xaia. Listen to them.’ Soft snores, a scuffling as if somebody was humping somebody else. ‘They are animals. Like pigs. Even Teif. They turn into animals when they sleep. But not us. We don’t need them.’ Her hand slid over Xaia’s waist.

Xaia, thrilled, uneasy, didn’t want her to stop. ‘Need them? I don’t understand.’

‘You don’t need Thom. Not any more. Not after this.
You have an Orb
, the Orb you took from Ossay Lange. A Founder’s Orb, the fifteenth, as valid as the fourteen that dangle from Thom’s fat neck. And you didn’t just have it handed to you by your uncle, like Thom. You found your Orb yourself, you risked your own life -’

‘And spent the lives of others.’

‘You can rule in your own right. We don’t need these others, Thom grunting like a pig over you.’ Her hand slid over Xaia’s breast, hard-palmed, almost like a man’s, and Xaia’s body shuddered with shock and desire. ‘We can rule Zeeland, you and I, Zeeland and the Scatter and the Belt and the rest of the world, forever -’ The word ended in a throaty gurgle. She convulsed, her hand gripping Xaia’s flesh so hard it hurt.

And Xaia felt a seeping of warm fluid, smelled an unmistakeable iron tang. Blood. Suddenly there was shouting, screaming.
 

Xaia grabbed her knife and rolled out of her bed, coming to her feet in a tangle of clothing. The light was dim. People moved everywhere, adults, children. She saw Chan huddled against a wall, a sword held in both hands before him. Before her, Manda, beautiful Manda, lay on her back with her throat laid open by a livid slash, her eyes on Xaia, fading. Over Manda’s prone body stood the girl, the smiling kid with the plaits who had brought Xaia the plate of fresh rabbit meat. She held a bloody knife in her hand.

And Teif stood in the middle of the chamber, huge, wrathful. Blood seeped from his own belly. Eykyn’s people stood off from him, wary. He swung his sword - and removed the head of Manda’s killer with a single swipe. The pretty head fell onto Manda’s belly, and the body convulsed, blood spurting from the arteries at the slim neck before falling.

The others closed in, the adults and the older children, all armed with clubs and knives. Xaia and Teif pushed through to stand before Chan by the wall, and Xaia scrabbled for her firearm. The detonations of the gunshots were ear-numbingly loud in the enclosed space, and their blades cut satisfyingly into human flesh. Xaia ignored the ache in her healing left arm, just as Teif showed no reaction to the gash in his belly.

The fight didn’t last long.
 

When it was done, Teif and Xaia laboured to pile the corpses at the centre of the chamber, Teif at the shoulders and Xaia grabbing feet and legs. The floor was slippery with blood, and spilled guts. Xaia was aware that Teif was grunting, his own wound giving him trouble. She felt stunned at the loss of Manda, unable to react, to think further.

They had spared a couple of the women, the smaller children. They huddled against a wall, clutching furs, eyes wide and fearful.

‘Told you so,’ Teif said as they worked.

‘So you did, old man. I won’t question you again.’

Chan, trembling, was in shock too. He seemed as afraid of Teif and Xaia as of dead Eykyn’s people. ‘I never saw people die that way. You were outnumbered. They way you killed them all – it was a frenzy.’

‘
They
are butchers,’ Teif said. ‘We are warriors. Once they lost the element of surprise they were doomed.’
 

Chan was nodding. ‘Butchers, yes. That’s the right word.
There are human bones
, piled up in the corner with the others. I took a look. You can see the butchery marks. They sit here in their hole in the ground, eking out their summer supplies, their scavenging of hibernating animals. And, when chance wills it, they take the opportunity to feast on a supplement, on passing humans whose flesh they take like that of the animals that migrate at the equinoxes. No wonder Lange’s cousins exiled from the Reef never came home!’ He glanced at the frightened children who huddled against their mothers. ‘Maybe they feed on their own, when times are particularly hard. Their own children as emergency larders. But with you three, they bit down on gristle.’