The White Towers (24 page)

They are old,
said Suza, voice low, gravelled, and for the first time in Kiki’s memory she seemed… unsure. Nervous. As if she was spilling some great secret that could dump her in a world of shit. Ironic. She was dead. What could be worse than that?

Again, Suza, you ain’t fucking surprising me
…

The screech rent the air like steel talons down a blackboard. Kiki winced behind the bars of her own caged skull. She ducked a little, as if imagining hurled projectiles. She wondered about her own sanity, and the fragility of her mortality.

Silence followed.

Kiki blinked in her reality, in the dark tunnel following Dek who was just a few steps ahead of her. She could taste copper. She must have bitten her tongue. She would have preferred the honey-leaf. That bitter-sweet drug crushed delicately under her tongue, tasting vaguely of lemon and cinnamon and
something else altogether more alien.
And then the head rush, and the pulsing in her veins and heart and head and womb. All parts joined together by the thumping pleasure that welled through a person, like wild surf storming a beach.

They’re coming,
said Suza. There was a hint of joy in her voice.

Kiki blinked, still remembering the honey-leaf. Oh gods, it had been so long and she missed it, missed it worse than her dead fucking mother and father, missed it worse than the best ever hot hard sex, driving, pushing her hard to a thumping, thrusting, slick orgasm. She missed it. Missed it more than life.

They’re coming,
grinned Suza through her dead white skull features, through eyes with maggots crawling deep and wriggling in rotting sockets; grinning, teeth dropping out, fingers clacking impatiently against her coffin lid as she drummed them, drummed them repeatedly as she waited to be buried and laid to rest.

But it was too late. They were already there.

They swarmed down the sewer in the gloom, surging through sewage, and they carried no weapons, but their fingers were long talons sharp as any razor. Kiki recognised them in that half-light, in the gloom from distant memories and ancient fairytales, and a distant, faded association with Sameska that had been all too brief; all too brief because she hadn’t learned half enough, hadn’t learned a hundredth of what she really, truly needed to know.

They’ll kill you, you know,
grinned Suza.

And then Dek was screaming, and Narnok was bellowing, and Kiki came slowly into bubbling consciousness as if rising from a deep dark pool. Dek was staring at her, hard eyes, his sword lifted in a defensive position, and she looked up fast to see the elf rats storming towards them through the narrow tunnel, sewage splashing and surging up the walls…

“Glad to have you back… at last!” snapped Dek, on the verge of panic.

“You should have woken me sooner,” smiled Kiki, sliding free both short swords as the first wave of elf rats hit them in the narrow tunnel confines.

“Let me through!” bellowed Narnok, but it was too late, the tunnels too narrow, and Kiki and Dek were shoulder to shoulder in the gloom.

Claws raked for Kiki’s face and she swayed, sword lashing out. It thumped, cutting the hand free at the wrist which splashed into the water. She saw a dark skinned face, ridged and twisted to one side as if roots grew through cheek to temple. Wide bright white eyes loomed at her and she took a step back, lowering her left sword and as the elf rat came on, despite its severed hand; thrust the blade up into its belly, the second blade hacking down through its clavicle with a crunch. She half expected the creature to be made of wood, for her blades to have no penetration; but the creature was flesh and blood, and the sharp honed steel bit deep and savage and the elf rat stumbled forward, deflating, going down under the sewage. Dek blocked a blow on his forearm, turned the block into a right-hand overhead punch to the face, then slammed his blade down vertically. It chopped the elf rat from shoulder to breast, cleaving it open. A second blow saw its head cut free in a shower of dark crimson.

If the narrow tunnel meant the other Iron Wolves could not join the battle, so it rendered the same restrictions on the attacking elf rats. They were snarling, rabid, savage, clawing at one another to get to the Iron Wolves as Kiki and Dek took down two more with hacks and cuts, and the bodies started to pile up, making it harder for the elf rats to advance, presenting stumbling blocks as Dek and Kiki took more steps backwards.

Trista unslung her bow, notched an arrow and let fly. It whistled past Dek’s ear and took a snarling elf rat through the eye. It looked stunned for a moment, black fletch quivering beside its nose, and then it collapsed.

Dek glanced back. “Be fucking careful with that thing!” he yelled.

“I’m accurate, nine times out of ten,” she smiled sweetly, face shadowed and eerie in the gloomy tunnel half-light.

More elf rats, clawing over one another. These had knives and swords, and for the first time the clash of steel rang out in the tunnel. Kiki, blocked an overhead swing, stuck her left blade through the elf rat’s throat in a quick thrust that left it choking, clawing on its own opened windpipe. Then she was attacking the next even before that dead one went under the shit, a fast hammer blow to the face with the hilt, and a diagonal slash from high right to low left, slapping through the elf rat’s leg to cut it free just above the knee and sending it crashing sideways into a comrade, stunned, as Dek removed its head.

Trista sent two more arrows flashing down the tunnel in quick succession, and two more elf rats went down with steel barbs in their eyes.

An elf rat blocked both Kiki’s blades with its own and front-kicked her. She stumbled back and the elf rat leapt at her, almost
on
her but Narnok was there, towering over it as his great battle-axe swung, removing the elf-rat’s head and missing Dek by a thumb’s breadth. Dek flinched sideways and snarled something incomprehensible at Narnok, who grinned and strode forward, great axe slamming through the three remaining elf rats in a figure of eight that removed two heads, followed by a final overhead slam that split the creature from crown to crotch in a bloody spray that cut the fucking thing clean in half. As its insides spilled noisily into the sewage, a sudden silence filled the tunnel, broken only by the lapping of water and faeces and dead elf rats against the crumbling black bricks.

“What were they guarding?” breathed Dek.

“Entrance to the city,” said Kiki, face crooked. “Question is, did any more of the bastards hear our little lover’s tiff?”

The Iron Wolves stood, listening. The minutes stretched out, then Kiki said, voice very low, “Nobody speaks from now on.” The others nodded, and moved warily forward, clambering over the twisted faces of dead elf rats, boots pushing them down into the slime.

They moved down the tunnel with care, trying not to splash or create too many waves.

They found the one-legged elf rat a hundred yards on, mouth just above the surface of the sewage, spluttering as it dragged itself forward with surprising speed – no-doubt to warn more of its kind.

“Let me deal with this,” rumbled Narnok.

“Oh no,” said Kiki, placing a hand against the huge warrior’s chest. “You stay right there.” She caught up with the elf rat and leaned the tip of one sword against the nape of its neck. It rolled over, looking up at her, eyes gleaming, a twisted smile on twisted lips reminiscent of bark. And then it started to laugh, and a chill crept into Kiki’s soul.

“Going to warn others of your kind?” she said, voice low.

“Yes.” The elf rat nodded.

“Are there many?”

“A few,” said the elf rat, voice slurred, breath coming in short, sharp pants. Then a dagger lunged up from the sewage and Kiki’s sword slammed down, knocking it aside.

“Who is your leader?”

“The sorcerer, Bazaroth aea Quazaquiel, and General Namash, led the forces of Daranganoth. Our king.” The elf rat’s voice was a low, rasping crawl. It spoke slowly, forming each word with care, as if unused to the language. “Human bitch, and I can tell you are a bitch because of the piss and semen stench between your legs, toxic and barren even through this smell of human shit.” It smiled. “Bitch. You
are
going to die.” Its gaze flickered to the rest of the Iron Wolves. “You are
all
going to die.” It launched itself at her, claws raking for her legs, long fangs like thorns trying to tear at her juicy, succulent thighs and Kiki stumbled back, her sword plunging down through the open snarling maw. A few teeth snapped. Blood pooled around the tip of her sword. The elf rat gagged, and choked, and died.

“I’m thinking, maybe to continue is perhaps not the best choice of action,” said Dek, slowly.

“Horse cock,” snapped Narnok, striding forward. “Tis nothing but hot words from a defeated enemy. Ignore it. Look how we bested them! They are like wheat beneath the shafts of our iron and steel.”

“We need to find out what’s going on,” said Kiki. And without further word, she stepped past the bobbing corpse and headed further into the eerie underworld beneath the city of Zanne.

 

They came to a set of steps guarded by a thick iron portal, which had been forcibly wrenched and twisted, like straws bent and broken by an angry child. Zastarte touched the thick iron bars, twisted out of shape, and ran his finger along the cold iron with a low whistle. “No human hands did this.”

“Come on.”

They mounted black brick steps and stopped, smelling the night air. Kiki peered above the ground, looking quickly about. The night was dark, thick snow clouds filling the sky and blocking out the light of the constellations. No lanterns or brands had been lit. Highly irregular in any city, where every king, prince, guardian, watchman and politician had to at least
appear like
they cared about citizen safety after dark, no matter what they felt inside their own money-grabbing cock-greasing back-stabbing petty little minds.

Kiki spied a nearby building, two stories, industrial, towering soot-smeared red brick, long and low. She moved from the sewer steps and darted for the doorway, a blank metal plate, and pushed it open, peering inside. The others followed, and they all stepped into a massive open space filled with benches and odd shapes in the darkness. A few shafts of light fell in through windows protected by steel mesh. Trista closed the door behind them, and they stood still, waiting to get a sense for their surroundings.

“Oh no,” said Dek, and looked to Kiki, although he could not see her features.

“What’s that smell?” said Trista, nostrils twitching. “It’s… sweet. But bitter. What is it?”

“The honey-leaf,” said Dek, quietly.

“This is an illegal processing plant,” said Narnok, moving forward to a bench. His hands moved over implements in the darkness. We must have come out in the Haven.”

“What’s the Haven?”

“The slums,” said Dek. “The shittiest of shit holes narrow alleys and dark taverns where evil bastards plan their dark deeds. A place where even the City Watch won’t tread. They leave it in the hands of the Red Thumb Gangs.”

“Ahh,” said Narnok, rubbing his short, patchy beard with the tip of his thumb. “I’m not well liked by them bastards.”

“Me neither,” said Dek.

“I, also, am not in their good books,” smiled Kiki, weakly. “Seems like we’ve all been busy making friends. Come on. Let’s get up to the roof, see if we can work out what’s going on.”

They moved with care through the honey-leaf processing factory, the smell prickling nostrils and making them all feel just a little bit sick. All except Kiki. Kiki felt her eyes widening a little, felt her nostrils flaring, her heartbeat – her
twin
heartbeats – quicken. As they walked along a floor littered with trip-hazards, she trailed her hand along a low bench filled with many small, intricate machines used for drying and compressing the plant leaves. And other machines used for mixing resins and pastes, to create cubes, and what were known in the trade as
coins,
little round pieces of dried paste honey-leaf which could be sat under the tongue and allowed to dissolve for a long period of time; even after one had lost consciousness.

Kiki’s hand trailed along the benches as they headed for a set of cheap iron stairs leading to the roof.

And Kiki could not help herself.

 

They crouched by a low parapet. Behind was a steep, sloping slate roof bordered by rusted iron railings. A cold breeze blew, ruffling hair and chilling exposed skin. The wind offered a knife-bite of winter. It spoke of ice, and frost, and death.

“What’s that?” said Narnok, pointing.

“A tree,” said Dek. “A big old oak, but it’s…”

“Twisted, broken. As if struck by lightning.”

“Yes.”

They peered some more, looking off over the Haven, the warren of slums, of narrow streets and tightly compacted houses, many of which, even in this poor light, could be seen to be in massive disrepair. Some were half fallen down ruins, abandoned, some simply skeletal structures of torched wood where nobody had bothered to rebuild or repair after a savagery of fire.

“There’s a lot of plant life in the streets,” said Narnok. “Look. All them shrubs and young saplings growing up. I wouldn’t expect that. Not here, and now.”

“Again, they’re all twisted and broken,” pointed out Dek.

“Aren’t elves supposed to be linked to trees? So the old stories go.”

“Maybe they’re growing their own?” said Dek, his words highlighting his unease.

Their gazes turned north, across the Haven, and then northeast towards Zanne Keep, the massive, hulking black cube at the centre of the city which acted as both King Yoon’s palace and citadel in these parts; and also as his War Council. Twin towers rose up in the sky, like thick black fingers, and the huge edifice was surrounded by an expanse of wildly tropical gardens which, even from this distance, looked more like a jungle of the far south than anything from northern climes.