The Iron jackal

Twenty-Nine

Frey pressed himself up against the wooden wall of the corridor, his eyes wide and his heart pounding.

Couldn’t have been.

He leaned out and looked round the corner. Down a short half-flight of rickety steps was a doorway to the street. Beyond was light and bright fabrics, dust and noise and chaos. A thoroughfare like a thousand others in Shasiith, hammered by the afternoon sun, hot as a kiln. And off the street were more doorways and alleys and passages: shadowy tributaries to the blinding river of humanity that ran between them.

Couldn’t have been.

Maybe he hadn’t seen what he thought he saw. Damn, the sun in this country was enough to give any man a touch of the strange. And no one could blame him for being jumpy.

Last night, he’d sent a message to the Trinica on the Delirium Trigger, to ask for a rendezvous in secret. When the time came, he decided to walk instead of going by rickshaw. He needed to rehearse his apology. And after that, he needed to work out how the spit he was going to persuade her to help him. Assuming, of course, that she turned up at all.

Wrapped up in his thoughts, nervous at the prospect of their meeting, he’d hardly been paying attention to the people around him as he walked. Hardly noticed his surroundings. It was only chance that he looked up when he did, and noticed the crumbling stone alleyway, and the Iron Jackal lurking in its shadow.

He’d thought himself safe in the day. Night was the time for horrors. Night was when he couldn’t sleep for fear that the Iron Jackal would come when his eyes were closed, when he couldn’t even have a drop of Shine to take the edge off because he needed to be alert in case… in case…

Couldn’t have been.

He clutched Crake’s device in his left hand. A chrome ball, the size of a large apple. It was featureless except for a single press-stud. Two slender wires ran from it to a battery pack that hung at his hip. The pack was heavy and clumsy and had been bashing against his leg all day, but Frey had gladly endured it. He’d take any chance he could get right now, and Crake’s invention was the only one offered to him.

You’ll only get a minute or two out of this, Crake had said, as he was strapping the pack to Frey. Don’t waste it. Find a hiding place and hold down the stud. It won’t work if the daemon can see or hear you, but it might stop it finding you by other means.

Agitated, he retreated from the corner, further up the corridor. Where was he, anyway? It was a dim wooden back-alley, a raised passageway that ran parallel to the street, with several doors leading off it, all closed. At one end was a rectangle of light, and a hubbub of voices and activity. He was protected from the sun here, but not from its heat, and the warm, soupy air drew sweat from his skin.

Halfway along the corridor, he stopped. Had he seen it? It was nothing more than a glimpse, really, and given how wound up and exhausted he was, the odd hallucination here and there was nothing to be surprised at. As the seconds ticked by, he became more and more certain that it hadn’t been anything at all.

Until he heard footsteps on the stairs.

His heart bucked in his chest. He drew a revolver with his free hand – an unthinking response to danger – and his body tensed, ready to run or fight. But probably run.

The panic only lasted a moment. The footsteps were too light, too fast to be made by the thing he feared. A middle-aged Dakkadian woman in dusty hemp robes came into view, carrying an armload of white sheets. She froze as she saw him, sucking in a shocked breath. Her narrow eyes widened at the sight of his revolver.

He shoved it quickly back in his belt and held up the empty hand to show her he meant no harm. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry. My fault. Thought you were a horrible daemonic monster.’

She frowned at him, evidently decided he wasn’t a threat, and hissed something in Samarlan that sounded insulting. Then she hustled past him, still muttering. He slumped back against the wall, letting out a sigh of relief.

A long, rattling snarl made his blood run cold. He turned his head slowly.

It came up the steps into the gloom, a hulking, blade-fingered shape that filled the passageway. It brought the darkness with it, shrouding itself in shadow. It twisted towards him, muzzled head cocked at an angle. The red gleam of its mechanical eye shone keenly against the blackness.

Frey backed up, tripped on his heel, turned and fled.

The Dakkadian woman hadn’t yet reached the end of the passageway. She spun around as she heard him running, and shrieked in alarm, thinking he was about to attack her. He shoved past her instead, knocking her against the wall, too scared to care about chivalry. She fell over in a bundle of sheets, and he raced past her and out into the light.

The passageway came out onto a raised plank walkway running through the middle of an enclosed square. Grubby apartments were stacked up on all sides, their balconies rusted and plaster walls cracked. To either side of the walkway were dye-pits, lurid circles of purple and yellow and red. Dozens of Dakkadians worked around the pits. Men stirred the thick dye with poles; women spread dripping fabrics onto racks, their arms stained to the elbows. Prowling along the walkway were three Samarlan overseers, keeping an eye on the slaves below.

Frey looked back over his shoulder. Maybe the Iron Jackal was confined to the darkness. Maybe sunlight would protect him. That hope died as the saw the Iron Jackal come lunging up the passage on all fours. It sprang over the fallen woman and landed in a predatory crouch on the walkway. In full view of everyone. Except that nobody was looking at it. They were all looking at him, wondering at the crazed foreigner who had come sprinting into their midst.

The nearest Samarlan, seeing Frey approach at pace, stepped back uncertainly. Then, reaching a decision, he dropped into a low stance, ready to tackle the intruder.

‘What are you doing, you moron?’ Frey screamed at him in disbelief. ‘Get out of the way!’

But the Samarlan wasn’t getting out of the way. He lunged when Frey was close enough. Frey clubbed him round the head with the chrome ball he was holding. The Samarlan pitched limply off the side of the walkway and plunged into a pit of purple dye. Frey scampered down a short set of steps that took him to ground level, and ran off between the dye-pits while workers were still trying to fish their unconscious overseer out with their poles.

The Iron Jackal didn’t need steps. It leaped off the walkway, over the heads of the oblivious workers, and landed in Frey’s path. He skidded to a halt and then dashed off in another direction, running along the line of the vats, colours burning in the sunlight as he passed.

The workers scattered out of his way. Others clapped and jeered, enjoying themselves at a madman’s expense. None of them saw the towering hybrid of animal, machine and man that ran through the dye-pits in the madman’s wake, outpacing him easily, bearing down on him.

Frey spotted an open door at the base of the apartments that surrounded the dye-pits. He put his head down and sprinted for it. He didn’t dare look behind. The Iron Jackal was upon him, surely. In an instant he’d feel those bayonets in his back, the way he’d felt one in his guts long ago. The sickening, precise, impossible pain as blades punched through skin and muscle. Now? Now?

Now?

He threw himself through the door, spun and slammed it shut. He caught the briefest glimpse of the Iron Jackal, bearing down on him like a steam train, and then the door met the jamb. He backed away, one step, two, three, waiting for the door to shatter into splinters, the beast to crash through.

Four steps. Five.

Six.

He stopped. The door was still there.

The Iron Jackal wasn’t coming through.

Somehow, that was worse.

He was in another corridor, this one made of plastered stone. It led between half a dozen identical doors with numbers on them. Apartments, he presumed. He ran past, his armpits, thighs and back soaking with sweat now. At the end was another door: heavy, wooden and slightly rotted.

He pushed it open and found himself in a narrow lane crushed between tall buildings on either side. Other alleys crisscrossed it: a back-street maze. A thin stream of filthy waste-water trickled past his feet. Bits of litter were half-submerged in the mud, absorbed by the ground, made part of it. The air stank of too many people and something worse, some vile reek that he couldn’t place.

To his right, the lane came out onto the busy street where he’d first spotted the Iron Jackal. No point going that way: crowds didn’t deter the daemon, and they’d only hinder him. So he turned left, and went into the maze.

Off the main thoroughfares, Shasiith was a haphazard muddle of lanes and passages that curved and plunged and rose with the landscape. Makeshift steps – stones buried in red mud – had been put where they could fit. Alleys that were barely wide enough for two abreast stood between leaning buildings of three or four storeys, reducing the sunlight to a distant glow. It was possible to hear people talking and children playing, the sounds of washing-up, a dog barking; but Frey didn’t see anyone at all, and the city felt eerily deserted.

Frey ran for a minute, enough to get himself thoroughly lost, and then pulled up to catch his breath. He was at the bottom of a shaft in the middle of several buildings, an atrium to allow light in for the interior windows, which were covered with dirty shutters. Foul water dripped from an outpipe with a streak of green mould beneath it.

He judged that he’d put some distance between himself and his pursuer now. Once, he might have felt safe, but he knew the Iron Jackal would find him again, just like it had last time. He lifted up Crake’s chrome ball and put his thumb over the stud.

‘This better work, Crake,’ he said, and pressed the stud.

Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Crake had told him that its effect was invisible, but when he’d been demonstrating it to Freying" align="j, it had hummed in his hand and vibrated. It hadn’t been much, but it was enough for Frey to be able to tell it was on. Now, it was just an inert piece of metal.

Horror crumpled his guts. He turned the sphere round in his hand and saw a small dent on one side, where he’d whacked that overseer round the head.

‘Oh, right,’ he said quietly to himself.

There was a clattering growl from above.

He didn’t need to look. He bolted.

The Iron Jackal dropped into the atrium, landing with a thump and a sharp hiss of hydraulics. Frey was already plunging down an arched stone passageway, searching frantically for an escape. Tight corners and narrow spaces were the only way he’d stay ahead of the creature: it would beat him in a straight race.

At the end of the alley was a T-junction. He was approaching too fast to see which way was best, so he picked one and went for it. He sprinted into a new alley and saw a corroded metal gate standing open ahead of him, on his right. He heard the sounds of animals, and smelt the source of the stench he’d detected earlier.

None of that deterred him. There were no other exits along the length of the alley, and he could hear the Iron Jackal pounding up behind him. Whatever was beyond the gate, it wasn’t worse than getting caught. He pelted through, his lungs burning in his chest, the daemon hot on his heels.

It looked like the site of a massacre. Everywhere, red and glistening flesh, freshly stripped of its skin. Headless, limbless carcasses hanging from hooks. Piles of guts and organs spilling off tables. Moving between the carnage were men in gore-smeared aprons, wielding long knives and machetes. The hot air buzzed with flies and reeked of new death.

A slaughter-yard.

The area was fenced off into various pens. Dakkadians lined the fences, shouting orders to the butchers, who killed the beasts in front of them and began carving them up on the spot. Chickens squawked and cows lowed, instinctively distressed. A bull, secured by handlers in metal stocks, was having its throat cut as Frey came racing in. Blood splashed into buckets while the bull’s hooves skidded in the mud as it pissed and shat itself.

The sordid efficiency of the scene might have nauseated Frey in other circumstances. But he was too busy running for his life to care.

He sprinted through the yard, between the pens. A Dakkadian butcher stared at him as he passed, a freshly beheaded chicken still twitching in his hand. Customers exclaimed in surprise and made way. He glanced over his shoulder, just in time to see the Iron Jackal leaping through the gates, its teeth bared in a snarl, its mismatched eyes fixed on him.

But twisting his neck while running at full speed caused speaping thrhim to wobble, and his foot went out from underneath him in the churned mud. He tumbled, crashing shoulder-first into a stack of small cages full of rabbits. The cages toppled onto him, bouncing painfully off his back, and some of them broke open, freeing the animals inside.

He heard cries of alarm and anger as he scrambled desperately to his feet, driven on by fear of the daemon. The butcher in the pen emerged from behind hanging rows of rabbit skins and stormed over, a bloody knife in his grip. But Frey saw that it wasn’t only his accident that had disturbed the people in the slaughter-yard. The animals had gone berserk. Chickens threw themselves against their cages; cows thundered about, eyes rolling; geese honked and flapped. Frightened customers backed away while butchers fought to control their animals. A herd of pigs broke through a fence with sheer weight of numbers, squealing as they climbed over each other. The yard was suddenly in chaos.

I’m not crazy! Frey thought as he ran for the far end of the pen. The animals sense it too!

He pushed his way through people who were fighting to get out. Pigs and rabbits darted about, zigzagging past butchers trying to recapture them. Jostled and shoved, he lost sight of his pursuer. He spotted a small gate on the edge of the pens, leading into the surrounding buildings, and went for it, barging panicked Daks this way and that. When he reached the gate, he paused, scanning the yard for a sign of his adversary.

It was there, between the pens, standing upright on its hind legs. The only still figure in the chaos. Daks and animals ran this way and that around it, but none touched the invisible thing in their midst: the horror with its hunched back and spiked-chain spine, machine parts sewing in and out of its moist fur, half its muzzled face made of black metal.

It was watching him. Like it had all the time in the world. Like it knew he couldn’t get away.

It’s playing with me, Frey though. It’s damned well playing with me!

Then it came for him, bounding through the crowd.

Just inside the gate was an anteroom, with empty racks and grubby, bloodied tables pushed against the walls. The only exits Frey could see were a narrow set of stairs leading up and a heavy metal door on the far wall. He didn’t want to go up, so he took the door instead. The handle was heavy and cold to the touch as he turned it. When he hauled the door open, he saw why.

Rows of carcasses stretched away from him, swinging gently on hooks, receding into an icy fog that stirred in the breeze from the door.

The meat locker.

He turned away, thinking he could make it to the stairs instead. He was just in time to see the Iron Jackal loom through the gateway to the slaughter yard. That black eye of Trinica’s fixed on him. He let out an involuntary shriek of fright as it lunged towards him, then he slipped inside the meat locker anmeae was justd pulled the door shut.

Not fast enough. The door was inches from the jamb when a hand bristling with bayonets clamped around the edge. The door hit the Iron Jackal’s fingers with a clang. But it didn’t close.

He let go of the door and fled into the depths of the meat locker. He pushed his way through sides of beef, racks of ribs, a forest of hard-frozen flesh. The cold enfolded him, chilling his skin with frightening speed. He was only wearing his lightest clothes, and even they had been too much in the heat of the Samarlan afternoon. Here, they were no protection at all.

The far wall appeared out of the fog. No way out. Course there’s no way out, it’s a damned meat locker! But he needed a way out, so he went towards the corner, slipping in between the rows, pulse thumping in his ears.

Stop moving. Think.

He stopped. Listened.

Somewhere out there, he could hear the heavy breathing of a large animal.

He ducked down to look beneath the hanging carcasses, hoping to get an idea of where the Iron Jackal was. The white fog foiled him, suggesting phantom movements everywhere.

He tried to make a plan, but his thoughts were tumbling over themselves. He couldn’t see the daemon, but the daemon knew where he was. Maybe it couldn’t pinpoint him exactly, but it knew enough to track him down. He peered between the obscuring slabs of meat. It could come from anywhere.

The chrome ball was still clutched in his hand. If only that overseer hadn’t had such a thick skull.

Then he noticed something. There were two wires coming from within the ball, running to the battery pack at his waist. One was more slack than the other, hanging loose. He pulled up his shirt and checked the pack where it was strapped to his waist, and as he did so, the end that was supposed to be attached to the pack fell free.

He’d yanked out the wire when he swung it at the Sammie, and it had come loose of its clip. The bloody thing wasn’t broken at all!

He raised his head. A huge silhouette crossed the row ahead of him; but then it was gone, without seeing him. Quickly, he ducked away, and slipped off in the other direction, moving as silently as he could.

Just give me a few seconds, you son of a bitch.

He tucked the ball under his armpit and snatched up the loose end of the wire. With both hands free, he coiled the wire around the battery terminal and secured the clip.

Now we’re in business!

The thump of the daemon’s clawed feet warned him an instant before it attacked. He threw himself back as a handful of blades slashed through the air towards him. They ripped into a frozen carcass and tore it in two. Frey tripped and crashed into a side of beef, hard as a wall. He fell to the ground, the chrome ball dropping with him. Somewhere in amid all the fog and flesh was a monster, close enough to grab him and tear him to pieces. He scrambled away on his hands and knees, snatching up the ball as he went. The beast snarled, hacking through carcasses to get at its prey, setting them all to swinging on their hooks. Frey found space to stand, got to his feet and ran for all he was worth in whichever direction he was facing.

Ahead of him, a blank wall. No, no, no. Wrong way!

He looked to his left, along the rows. And there it was: the door. He heard the thump of clawed feet again: the Iron Jackal, racing along the rows. Done playing now. Intent on the kill.

He burst through the open doorway, out of the meat locker, back into the anteroom. His one and only thought as he crossed the boundary was to close the door behind him, to trap the thing, shut it inside. But two of the butchers were just coming in from the slaughter-yard with cleavers in their hands. They saw him coming out of the locker, recognised him, and charged.

His revolver was out in a moment. He fired at the ground in front of them, and they faltered. They backed away, hands held up. Frey looked past them into the yard, and saw more of their fellows coming, drawn by the gunshot.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. He didn’t have time for this. He ran for the only quick exit he had: the stairs.

The stairs turned back on themselves and let out onto a short corridor with doors to either side. At the end was a large window. There was no glass in it – few windows had glass in Shasiith – but it was shuttered against the sunlight.

Frey heard someone or some thing crashing up the stairs behind him. He sprinted the length of the corridor and threw himself at the shutters. They were flimsy, and splintered before him, sending him tumbling out onto a sloping roof. His legs went from under him and he bounced and rolled before plunging off the edge and into the alley beyond.

The drop was only a couple of metres, a single storey, and the floor was packed mud rather than stone. It was still enough to knock the wind out of him, and it was only because he landed well that he didn’t break a bone. Gasping for breath, his vision blurred with pain, he raised his head. Right in front of him was a cart full of hay.

Why couldn’t I have bloody landed on that?

The owner was nowhere to be seen, having left the donkey that drew the cart tethered up in the deserted alleyway. Frey scrambled under the cart. He only had seconds to act before the Iron Jackal appeared. In the hot shade under the cart, he fumbled the chrome ball into his hands, and pressed his thumb down on the stud.

It vibrated in his hands.

There was a loud impact above him as something heavy landed on the cart, and the bottom suddenly dropped towards Frey. He cringed and squeezed his eyes shut: it took a second before he realised he hadn’t been squashed. One of the wheels had snapped, and the floor of the cart was now tipped at an angle, mere centimetres above him. But he was still here, and still holding down the stud for all he was worth.

The donkey was braying frantically and pulling against its tether, making the cart wheels scrape back and forth. Frey was caught between trying to catch his breath and trying not to breathe. He gasped silently like a landed fish and did his best not to move.

The cart creaked above him as the Iron Jackal shifted its weight. He heard a long, low snarl. Angry. Suspicious. Suddenly, a flurry of savage movement: hay went flying everywhere, landing in clumps to either side of the cart.

You can’t find me, you bastard, he thought, terror making him defiant. You can’t find me.

Then the cart lurched again. Another impact, this one lighter. The Iron Jackal, launching off.

He listened, not daring to move. The donkey gradually stopped bucking and braying.

He kept holding down the stud until long after the ball had stopped vibrating, and the battery pack had died.

After the donkey had been calm for several minutes, he crawled out into the light. He still half-expected the Iron Jackal to be hiding on top of the cart, waiting to stab him in the back from above. But there was no sign of it, and something told him it had gone.

He’d survived the second visit. That only left the last. If the sorcerer was to be believed, the Iron Jackal wouldn’t give up a third time.

He coughed and spat. Aching everywhere, he made his painful way up the alley. He still had a rendezvous with Trinica to get to. And he was pretty sure the damned daemon had made him late.