The City's son

CHAPTER 50

I manage a half-arsed swipe at the closest wolf on my way down, but I don’t know if I connect. The ground jolts through me as I push hard off the stone and I can feel fangs cleaving the air near my neck, but I don’t dare risk stopping to fight.

Faster, faster, I will myself. If I could run even half as fast as my heart’s drumming they’d never catch me. The rubble of Reach’s killing fields is dead; there’s no help for me here, no power to lend speed to my feet. The lifeless stone makes my skin crawl.

My chest is tight with excitement: I am armed and ready, and inches away from my mother’s foe.

I stumble over deeply grooved ground: the furrows make up Reach’s ferociously ugly forehead. A ramp rises before me, the bridge of his nose. As I race along it I can hear steel ringing off stone behind me. I can taste the metal stink of the wolves.

I look down as I jump off the end of the ramp. A pair of massive lips, cracked like hot pavement, pass underneath me. I land awkwardly on the fat bastard’s overly round chin, my feet slipping over the smooth surface. A sharp pain rips up through my ankle and I fall, smacking my face on a random lump of stone that protrudes from the earth apparently for the sole purpose of spreading my nose over my face.

‘Bugger!’ I yell, pain and frustration flooding through me. The wolves’ bounds shake the ground. Sweat greases my palms as I try to push myself up and I fall back. My wounds have reopened; I can see blood oozing down my arm.

Drive your spear into his throat.

If I was just on Reach’s chin, then that lump of rock I’ve headbutted is exactly where his Adam’s apple would be.

The pain in my ankle changes, becomes deeper, bloodier. There’s something sharp punching through the bone. I scream, shove myself up with one arm, raise the iron spear in the other and plunge it down into the rock.

Everything stops.

I know this because suddenly my scream is the only sound and it cuts through the air with shocking clarity. I hear no cranes, no diggers, no construction; even the wolves behind me have stopped growling (although for the one that’s got its chops wrapped around my ankle that’s not surprising; I am quite a mouthful).

My heart almost stops.

For an ecstatic, terrified moment I think, I’ve done it. I’ve killed the Crane King.

‘FIL!’

Beth’s shout rips my head around. Gears whir. A metal lanyard rotates. Suddenly all I can see is a hook on a cable, swinging in fast and low over the broken ground towards me. I try to get up, but the wolf has my ankle and anyway it’s too late.

The hook slams into my gut.