The Broken Isles

THIRTY — THREE

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Randur said suddenly. It was pitch-black, and he’d only managed to get four hours’ sleep, but it was better than none. He stood up and stretched himself awake. The cold soon brought his senses back.

He took a mouthful of bread and a glug of water before he crouched by Eir. ‘I’m going to head over the side of the building. We’ve got rope, right?’

‘What on earth for?’

‘I need to visit someone,’ Randur smiled, moving over to a specific bag they had brought up. He rummaged inside, clanked about, managed to scoop something out and conceal it in one of the pockets of his breeches. ‘Just trust me, OK?’

‘Don’t go, Randur, stay. Can’t you send one of the others to do whatever it is you have in mind?’

‘Nope. No one else will know the way.’

‘What are you going to do exactly?’ She eyed him with suspicion.

‘Just trust me.’

Randur gave orders to some of the men to help tie him securely so he could step over the edge and abseil down one side of the building, near one specific area. He walked down the wet stonework as if he had done it all his life, though he was fearful that he’d fall onto the streets below.

Now’s not the time to show you’re scared, Randur, he told himself. You’ve blagged your way through life — at least you can give everyone a little hope you know what you’re doing. .

After a few minutes of faffing about on his way down, he managed to find the window he wanted. Luckily it was on one of the higher floors, where they had not bothered boarding up the windows, only the doors on the inside. He peered through the glass but knew there would be no one on the inside.

No one from the gangs, at least.

He kicked at the glass and in large chunks it shattered. He cleaned the gap of any shards, and laid a piece of cloth on the windowsill for extra protection. Gripping the sides of the frame, he manoeuvred his legs into the gap, before untying the rope from around his waist. He sat there, momentarily, cursing his lack of fitness. A year ago and this would have been a piece of piss, he thought.

Once he had regained his breath, he wriggled through the gap and into the corridor connecting the gaol cells. He looked around for any signs that he had been spotted, but guessed he had got away with it.

Rika was in the corner. She appeared gaunt, skinnier than ever, but her expression was one of deep anger and resentment.

‘Evening,’ he announced, but she showed no signs of having heard him. ‘I’m guessing you’re probably quite hungry, right?’

Again, nothing.

‘Well, I’ve got a surprise for you.’ Randur pulled the key from his pocket. First he walked to the main door that connected with the rest of the Citadel and checked it would open easily; then he returned and put the key in the lock. Hungrily, Rika glanced to his hand and then back at him. He reached down into his boot, drew out a dagger, and placed it outside the cell, then sprinted to the window, jumped back up onto the frame, tied the rope securely around his waist. He heard the key click in the lock and the gaol door creak open. He slid his head then the rest of his body up and out of the window. He tugged down three times on the rope and shouted that he was coming up. He began to feel the rope tighten then yank him back outside into the darkness.

Back on the roof, back safely with Eir, she demanded he tell her what he had been up to.

‘I went to see Rika,’ Randur muttered.

Eir contemplated his statement and replied, ‘You freed her, didn’t you?’ There were conflicted emotions in her gaze, and he placed his hand over hers. ‘She hasn’t eaten in days, but she’s capable of causing a lot of damage. It took a superhero to catch her, that other night, you know.’

‘I can’t believe you did that without consulting me.’

‘It was the right thing to do, Eir. They would have killed her if they had seen her in the cell like that. They’d have shown no mercy because of who she was. If we’d brought her up here, she would have eaten us all.’

Eir remained silent, but the fact that she did not withdraw her hand indicated that she could well have supported his decision.

Screams filtered up through the night. They were occasional, at first — could have been anything. But the next time Randur woke up, the wails of agony from below were terrifying, far more so than anything the gangs had imposed upon the group. Men seemed to be suffering from horrific ordeals. They were sobbing and screeching like bats.

There must have been very few places to run in the winding corridors of the Citadel, very few ways in which to escape. However, if you were familiar with the layout, as Rika was, then there would be infinite places to take refuge.

Perhaps it was a very cruel thing for him to have done, unleash some mad cannibal in such confines. Perhaps. .

Only when the screams finally diminished could he fall asleep once again.

The crowds began to surge again, down below. The first rays of the morning sun began to show themselves, peeling back the darkness of the night. It had been a quiet evening. If indeed there had been breaches of the higher levels of the Citadel, Randur wasn’t aware of it. For all he knew, the gangs might have decided that there was no one around any more; that they had vanished down some secret tunnel. There was nothing to reveal that they were on the roof.

They ate meagre rations and waited. Noises filtered up from below: the Citadel was being ransacked. All that the commander had worked for was probably being ripped up or, judging by the burning smells, being set alight.

‘Do you think we should perhaps negotiate with them, lay down our weapons?’ one of the guards said.

‘Oh that’s right,’ Randur replied, ‘hand them our arses on a plate. Do you really think they’ll offer any kind of mercy? These are gangs — another word for c-’

‘Randur!’ Eir interrupted. ‘There’s no need for that. The man was simply asking a logical question.’

‘Logical?’ Randur spluttered, and glared at the soldier. ‘You can hand yourself in if you want. They might use your head as a vase if you’re lucky.’

‘I meant no offence, sir,’ the soldier replied wearily. ‘My apologies. I will, of course, fight as long as you instruct me to.’

‘Good.’ Randur strode to the edge of the building to look over the cityscape, feeling the chill wind on his face. He half hoped someone would see him and report that there were people on the roof. He wanted people to come at him now. He was sick of waiting — that was all he had done since he’d been in the city. He was a country lad, a scrapper. What’s more, he hadn’t had a good fight in ages.

He glanced back to the others, whose attention was now drawn to the opposite side of the roof — there, in the face of the onshore wind, someone was trying to climb up. Randur ran to address the situation, but arrived as the soldiers knocked the individual back down to the balcony a couple of floors below. The thug, a thickset man with a beard, fell flat on his back and lay motionless, staring up at them. Below the balcony, the streets were thronging with people.

‘Well, now they know we’re here,’ Randur muttered.

It wasn’t long before people were trying to get through the hatch and over the side of the wall. Not many attempted the latter route — it was too dangerous. The hatch repeatedly clattered until the sun was much higher in the sky, which led Randur to believe that people were taking it in turns to batter it.

Everyone looked to Randur and Eir for guidance now, but when an axe pummelled upwards into the wood, the soldiers stepped back and withdrew their weapons. Eir did the same. Randur took a few paces away to get a better perspective on the scene, before drawing his own blade and channelling in to his old sword techniques.

It felt as if he had met with an old friend again — that familiarity with the tension, the adrenalin, channelling his rage.

The hatch split.

One of the soldiers thrust his blade in the gap, stabbing someone down below. A cry came up, followed by a clatter as whoever it was fell backwards. Then a silence lingered. Randur could feel his pulse thicken in his throat.

Three soldiers stood around the hatch, waiting, swords in hand.

An arrow flew up and through the gap, narrowly missing one of the men. A moment later, more debris was tossed up, then someone tried to lunge out — he got a sword to his neck and fell bleeding down below, but by that point another man had squirmed up, waving a mace around his head as he did so, gashing one of the soldiers in the leg before another came to him with his blade. In the mayhem, more gang members piled out of the hatch, three now, each of different stature, and they shambled around the rooftop, weapons extended, but with a tired look in their eyes.

Randur smiled, knowing that they would not have had the benefit of a decent night’s sleep, as suggested by their lazy sword-handling and slowness of step. The soldiers quickly dispatched the invaders before yet more thugs came up in their place. Soon most of the soldiers were engaged in the business of sword-fighting as one, darkly handsome individual clambered up and sauntered around away from the main fight.

He was an onlooker, here, waiting for the mess to be over.

Randur noticed that three of the soldiers now lay dead or bleeding to death on the rooftop. People were dropping like flies — this was messy, useless combat.

The man with the handsome face and three-day-old stubble strode around the edge of the fighting and nodded at both Randur and Eir, before drawing his sword.

‘What’s your name, kid?’ the man asked, above the groaning of the wind.

‘Randur Estevu,’ he replied.

‘Bit of a crap name, that.’

‘Can you do any better?’

‘Malum,’ the man declared.

‘Not much better at all.’

‘Blame my mother,’ Malum muttered. ‘I take it this is Lady Jamur Rika?’

‘Jamur Eir, her sister,’ Eir replied. She was now clutching her sword in anticipation.

Randur decided then was a good time to bring out his own blade, and the three of them stood there, to one side. ‘Quite a few screams last night,’ he announced. ‘Must have been pretty messy.’

‘Was that your doing?’ Malum replied.

Randur shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’ll tell you, shall I? I lost forty of my best guys, and five others lost a few of their limbs. Mad bitch, whoever it was.’

‘Did you stop her?’ Eir replied.

‘No,’ Malum replied. ‘She dined her way down a floor or two and jumped out of a second-floor window. She’s somewhere lost in the city for all I know. Who was she?’

Randur began. ‘That was Lady-’

‘We don’t know who you’re talking about,’ Eir interrupted, glaring at Randur.

The fight continued around them. Randur saw Blavat dropping something down the hatch that caused a blinding flash of light below.

‘Useful things, cultists,’ Malum said.

The man was strangely confident, cockier than even Randur himself, which was a disarming point to note. The way he strode about the rooftop as if this was already his Citadel was something that annoyed Randur. He stood with one foot up on the low gap between crenellations so that he could tighten his boot laces.

Such arrogance, Randur thought. He cautioned for Eir to move further away. ‘He looks a good fighter. It’ll be easier if I’m not worried about you,’ he whispered, and could see the annoyance in her face. Despite this, she moved back.

‘Well, enough of pleasantries,’ Malum declared, and with a sudden fury launched into a blazing attack on Randur, nearly catching him off guard from the off. While the commotion continued around them, Malum forced Randur further along the rooftop. Randur intercepted the first flurry of blows with difficulty — he was out of decent practice, and the force of Malum’s strikes was incredibly intense.

But soon Randur gained control.

His tactic would be to let Malum wear himself out, to go on the defensive, to guide the strikes away harmlessly. He did not fight in any style that Randur knew of, and there was no grace to the man’s aggressive technique.

Two blows to either side within a split second nearly disarmed Randur completely. He stumbled back across the rooftop and caught a side-long glimpse of Eir engaged in combat herself, but he didn’t have time to register her progress, he was back on his feet firmly, back on the defensive, the repetitive zing of steel sliding across steel filling his ears.

Malum did not tire. Was he some kind of animal? He still retained the same level of aggression as in his first blows. Randur shifted his focus momentarily to see the man’s face, which was a picture of rage — and were they fangs in his snarling mouth?

Randur was breathless. He could only parry so much before he realized he would have to commence his own attack. He dashed to his right, wrong-footing Malum, moving around another fight, taking a moment to register the high red sun and the dizzying cityscape below, before lurching right at Malum with a flurry of attacks.

Malum was now on the back foot, weakened, uneasy with defending. Randur tried a whole range of tricks, but was surprised at how quickly Malum could react. There was definitely something animalistic about this man.

The rooftop began to flood with corpses. There was another flash as Blavat moved across the rooftop. There was smoke now, something definitely burning, and Randur saw a blur of movement behind Malum: Eir dragged her sword across his arm as she whipped by, out of sight, and Malum screamed out, gripped his now-bleeding arm then held out his stained fingers momentarily towards Randur. He licked his blood in some perverse manner.

‘You’re a bit weird really, aren’t you?’ Randur said. ‘Is all this some kind of ego trip for a madman?’ He gestured to the mess all around them.

That seemed to ruffle a few more feathers, not that Malum really needed it. He recommenced his attack, but this time Randur noticed that everyone else had stopped fighting — everyone apart from Malum. People were standing back and pointing up, to the sky. Randur forced a break in the fight and dashed out of arm’s reach to get a better look at what was going on.

Black shapes were flying in the sunlight, circling as silhouettes. Soon a few smaller shapes detached themselves and drifted towards them. The gang members began to panic as the shapes — very similar to the ones previously in the courtyard — skimmed down to land at the far end of the rooftop. Several individuals, each wearing strange black helmets, dismounted and began to advance.

The pale face of Brynd Lathraea was revealed.

Malum grinned and twisted his chest to face the commander full on. ‘So you’re still alive, homo,’ he snarled at him. ‘It’s a bit too late to ruin the fun.’

Brynd gave a despairing laugh. ‘The fun will be in personally digging your grave, you little shit.’

If Brynd was tired from his battle, he showed no traces of it. While the rest of the Night Guard began to approach the remaining gang members, who threw down their weapons and backed off immediately, Brynd clashed with Malum with a level of violence that seemed unnatural for such a usually calm man.

Malum instantly stumbled and fell, but rolled away from a blow aimed at his throat. He pushed himself up again to resume his defence. Brynd’s strikes overpowered Malum: the man was on the back foot at all times. Brynd was drawing this out, knocking him back, walking slowly, waiting for him to get on his feet. Malum snarled like a feral dog, but Brynd wasn’t having any of it. Randur spotted at least three occasions where Brynd could have finished the job, but instead he would throw a punch to his stomach or jaw, sending the man sprawling.

He forced Malum towards the edge of the roof, up against the battlements, where there was no more room to run. With a combination of quick moves, Brynd had put a deep cut in Malum’s arm and forced him to drop his sword.

The gang leader fell to his knees in pain. He growled, clutching his arms, ‘You wouldn’t hit an unarmed man, a man of your dignity? Go on, do it. I dare you.’

Brynd walked around to one side, utterly expressionless. Eir came along to stand next to Randur, and they both watched, waiting to see what would happen.

‘I could show you mercy,’ Brynd called out, then turned to address those on the roof, those few still standing, those gang members now lying face down with their hands over the back of their heads, his own Night Guard soldiers. ‘I could show him mercy, couldn’t I?’ he bellowed.

Only the sounds of the wind and the sea in the distance could be heard.

Malum spat at the commander’s boots. ‘Get on with it. I never was a patient man.’

Brynd stood over him. He drew one arm back and sideways, holding up his blade, and in a frighteningly quick swipe he cut off Malum’s head. One of the bound gang members gasped. Another called out something inaudible. There was a genuine look of emotion in their eyes.

Brynd watched the body slump down as the blood pooled thickly by his boots. He moved over to one side to retrieve the head and grabbed it up by the hair. He held it aloft to a bass cheer from his own soldiers.

Brynd then walked calmly over to Randur and Eir, still clutching Malum’s head. Randur could barely take his eyes off it.

‘I wore him down for you,’ Randur grinned. ‘Erm, welcome back, commander. Sorry the place is a bit of a mess. Personally, I blame Eir.’ He nudged her in the ribs.

‘Randur!’ Eir gasped. ‘My apologies, commander. We did our best against overwhelming numbers.’

‘You did just fine,’ Brynd replied. Only now could Randur see just how tired the man was. ‘How long was this going on for?’

‘A couple of nights and days, I’d say? I’ve lost track if I’m honest. It all sprawled into one sleepless night.’ Randur turned to Eir for confirmation and she nodded.

‘Good work,’ Brynd replied. ‘I mean that.’

Randur found himself incredibly uneasy when speaking to a man carrying a severed head. Blood still dripped from it onto the roof and Randur casually moved out of the way of the trail of blood. ‘What are those things?’ Randur pointed to the enormous insects now at the far end of the rooftop.

‘They’re called Mourning Wasps. New form of transport. Very useful in a tricky situation.’

‘Was that you who came earlier?’ Randur asked. ‘We saw some similar things a while ago.’

‘No.’ Brynd’s confusion gave way to a private realization that Randur must mean Jeza and her friends.

Randur looked over to the wasps, which seemed inert, hardly moving at all. He quite fancied having a go on one.

‘The battle — it went well, did it?’ Eir asked. ‘As well as these things can go.’

‘You know the cost of war as well as I do, having seen the remnants in the hospital. Artemisia’s people lost more than we did, since our lines were far behind her own, protecting our towns and our people. But the loss of life was many times what we saw in Villiren. Half the Night Guard has gone.’

Eir opened her mouth to say something, but then thought better of it.

‘What’re you going to do with that head?’ Randur asked, pointing to it.

‘There are still a few dozen gang types in the Citadel. I’m going to round them all up, show them this head, then place it on a spike by the entrance for everyone to see.’

‘Good advertisement, that,’ Randur admitted.

‘Senior members of the gangs will be executed also. Another warning, another lesson to be given to the people. If we’re to move our culture on, and live side by side with one another, we damn well need to have some respect for the operations of this Citadel or we’ll have riots every day.’

Eir cringed, but nodded. ‘I understand.’

Who exactly was ruling here? Randur reflected.

‘Besides, the man whose head I hold made his trade before the war by putting fear into the lives of the citizens of this city. Good, honest people will want to see his head on a spike. They’ll sleep easily knowing the gangs have been dealt such a blow.’

‘Where’s Artemisia?’ Eir asked.

‘She’s still with her people,’ Brynd replied. ‘They have much grieving to do. We’ll grieve with them also, when the time is right. They gave so many lives in order to save their future — and ours — here, on this Archipelago.’

‘What next?’ Randur asked. ‘Clean up the Citadel, start getting things back in shape in Villiren, help Artemisia’s culture with cleaning up the dead?’

‘All of those things,’ Brynd replied. As he turned away, still clutching Malum’s severed head, he called over his shoulder, ‘And then, we plan for peace.’