City of Ruin

SIX

The spider crossed a line of silk woven above a busy night-iren, bobbing up and down as it skittered across to the other side. A festival was going on below, in the marketplace, with men and women in furs and masks acting out a legend of the yellow sun. As they pranced around firelight brandishing sticks and biolumes in time to the drums, the spider mounted the opposite rooftop and skimmed down the near flank of the building.

It banked over one of the numerous drainage channels that penetrated the city like a network of thick veins. Many of them were littered with waste and scrap metal, and appeared no more than slivers of apocalyptic landscapes. Every night the city's poor would scavenge them for the chance of survival, and for a moment it considered selecting one of them… but no, they were too poor, too undernourished.

Only healthy, lean cuts will do.

Besides, they weren't on the list that Doctor Voland had been given.

Through the streets again and up onto the metal railings running along outside one building. Tap-tap-tap up to the top, and soon it had a perfect view of the windows opposite, squares of light signifying ordinary people's lives.

Red lanterns glowed inside two of the nearest rooms, with fires roaring in their grates in the background. In one of them, an old woman was reclining in a chair with a book laid to one side of her. In another on the floor above, a blonde woman in underwear was staring out of the window, her blue mask pressed up against the glass. She seemed to be peering directly at the spider, but it knew it was too dark to be seen, for the creature had the advantage of the night. A bald man with a pencil-thin moustache approached her, slapped her behind and she giggled. She removed her mask, turned and kissed him, who then took off his shirt to reveal a skinny frame.

The spider seethed at the indignity of the woman's behaviour. This man was one of the union leaders – he was therefore on the list. The lantern sputtered out as the couple merged into the darkness of the room behind – and the spider waited.

*

As Larkin kissed the nape of her neck she realized she didn't really care about her husband any more. That sorry loser was nothing compared with her visitor. She had watched as Larkin, eloquent and passionate, had earlier that day called for strike action from the fishermen and stevedores. The portreeve had reduced both their pay and their prices in order to help fund the war effort, so he said, but everyone knew this was just an excuse to worsen the conditions of the workforce. Her husband, the dickhead, had walked away from the meeting, insisting that he wanted to work, and the rest of them could fuck off. She hated his lack of commitment to the movement, and his small-town opinions. She now felt a faint thrill at the fact that Larkin was so popular with the ladies – yet he had chosen her.

She'd be rid of her husband by the morning.

She kissed her way down Larkin's lithe body, unbuckling him, basking in the warmth of the fire to one side. Breeches slid off slowly, then his socks, and she slowly teased him to arousal, then finally wrapped her mouth around his expectant cock. As her hair fell forward to cover this act of intimacy, he groaned the way most men did, but did not push her head down so she was forced to gag. He seemed almost grateful for her skills – and why not? She knew how to give good head.

Something rattled at the window and she paused for a moment, but now heard only the sound of the festivities taking place two streets away. Must be the snow, she decided.

Bang.

She flinched at the sudden noise.

'Don't worry,' Larkin reassured her, running a hand tenderly through her hair. 'It's only a firework.' His eyes were so sensitive, so big and blue. She turned her attention to him once again, prolonging the moment, while enjoying the sense of his mounting excitement. His breathing started to quicken and…

Bang.

'What the-?' Everything seemed to happen so slowly: the ceiling collapsed and debris clattered around the room, then a monstrous beast descended through the continuing rain of plaster, and pinned them to the bed as the rubble smothered the fire.

It can't be…

A monstrous spider loomed above them.

'Dear Bohr, no!' she screamed, and found her hands were pinned tight by a couple of its massive hairy legs, and she was now pushed flat on top of Larkin. 'Get off me, please, no!' And the eyes – those horrible, countless eyes – were staring back at her, and Larkin began to shudder and whimper underneath her and something warm covered the bed. He had pissed himself.

Fireworks continued to explode outside, the shouts of enjoyment drowning out her own screams.

The monster gurgitated something from its mouth and silk began to fill her throat. She gagged – and fainted away.

*

Commander, I'm about to embark upon the reconnaissance journey, Flight

Lieutenant Gybson signed by making complex shapes between his finger, palm and thumb. Are there any territories you wish me to explore?

As Commander Lathraea addressed the garuda, the bird-soldier standing a foot taller than himself, his vision swept across the brown and white plumage visible beneath the bronze breastplate. Touches of red tingeing the soldier's facial features reminded him of tribal warpaint. Two arms protruding beneath those mighty wings were a reminder of something vaguely human that Brynd could never quite comprehend. They never spoke much about themselves, these bird people, so all he knew of them essentially came from journals, reports, a bunch of statistics and strategies. Who they were exactly, he suspected he'd never know. Personality was so difficult to ascertain without being able to decipher the subtleties of a facial expression, the nuance of their voice.

'I'll check the maps.' A few stops to the other side of the chamber brought him to a large desk, where he picked out a map of Tineag'l – one of the more up-to-date ones commissioned two years ago for tax purposes – and brought it over to the table. 'If you could investigate the channel running directly north from here, keeping the sun always behind you, then we can judge more accurately the depth and level of enemy forces. We know there's little sign of them along the coast itself, yet they're constantly massing on that opposite shore. Nothing more than a two-hour flight should be necessary. I'd like to get more of an impression of the potential longevity of their assault, when it arrives.' And how many of his own soldiers he could anticipate dying.

Very good, sir. Gybson exited the room towards the viewing platform, and mounted a merlon.

Brynd moved to a viewing hatch encased in the wall. A flick of wing obscured the red sun for a moment, as the garuda leapt off the side in a sudden freefall, before catching the wind and pushing a little higher to catch a thermal.

*

Days like this were what flying was all about: rare, clear weather on all sides, with nothing that threatened snow. There were few days like this one, when he could make out the horizon so exactly, when he could feel a sudden thrill. Winds raced underneath his spread feathers.

It wasn't an ideal life, all the same. Gybson had family back on

Kullrun, in the garuda caves on the north-western coast. Two chicks to see fed well, another egg in the nest. The money was good, being employed in the Empire's service, so they could afford a good life compared with their garuda kin. The last time he was on leave, his youngest had only just begun to fly: it had been a sprawling, messy attempt that led to Gybson having to swoop down in order to stop the little fellow splitting his head on the rocks below.

Talking to some of the other lads in the air force about his homeland always brought a vague nostalgia for the good old days when he just wanted to explore the skies, climb higher, travel further. And enjoy endless summers – when there were summers, of course. But he had been one of the garudas selected at an early age for military service, so those expansive days of soaring through infinite skies were soon over.

The harbour below was crammed with the old refugee vessels, making it difficult for the fishermen to navigate any of the channels exiting Port Nostalgia. All along Y'iren's northern coast, military stations and warning beacons had been spaced at regular intervals, in case an invasion fleet should bank and alight some distance away from Villiren itself. Dragoon soldiers held these positions, just visible in their black, green and brown uniforms, operating in small patrol groups of threes and fours.

A flight heading directly north for any considerable distance was uncommon. Gybson's usual missions involved patrolling the coast indefinitely, to observe if there were any marked variants in the progress of ice, if a passage could still be cut across it, and then to watch out for any attempted enemy crossings by boat, or if these Okun could traverse the water by other means.

Eventually having reached sight of Tineag'l, he glided along some distance above where the shoreline proper began, over ice sheets extending towards the mainland beyond. Nothing ever seemed to change along these shores: abandoned villages, the trails of blood faded into white, sometimes a lone cart.

Then he'd fly higher, safer, with grim knowledge of what came next.

Another quarter of an hour, and there they were, these Okun, their black armour a stark contrast against the dazzling snow. Their numbers had proliferated, a good three thousand in this first community – a tentscape with tendrils of smoke drifting above. Red-skinned rumel rode on horseback between them, apparently in command of this freak-show army. They had already cleared Tineag'l and wiped out every town and village across the island.

And yet thousands still approached, a thin line in the distance now, like a deep scar cleaving the landscape. The best part of ten thousand gathered within an hour's reach of the southern shore – the nearest crossing point to Villiren.

By an adjustment of focus, he could see broadswords and maces, arrows and axes and spears. This was an army preparing for siege.

Further north still, the garuda headed across tundra and blue-hazed hills, mountains and gorges, across frozen lakes and rivers and snow-filled mining basins. The land was otherwise void of its population.

This was already known to the military. Local people had been systematically cleared, only the very young or very old being left behind, and even then only their carcasses – the bones tentatively stripped out of the bodies, then rejected. Evidence of this was occasionally provided by bloodstained banks of snow bordering empty villages or mining towns, and the garuda's sensitive vision could pick out how the remaining people had been left, their bodies broken into awkward shapes, and then preserved by the cold. The irony of people being themselves mined on this mining island was not lost on him.

Now and then were seen pockets of the new race, these alien creatures, out scouting in small troops. Sometimes they would be accompanied by a rumel rider, steering his horse in the middle of their group, or narrowly ahead.

Theories had evolved quickly about why the rumel had been seen amongst them, but Commander Lathraea didn't want this inflammatory information released to the public. Humans and rumels had been living alongside each other for millennia now – two bipedal creatures that shared a similar culture, but that symbiosis could crumble from time to time – racial tensions had always existed.

But since humans would always find ways to react in a new set of circumstances, to somehow take control of such uncertainty, he now feared a backlash against the rumel living in their midst.

*

This was as far north as the garuda dared go, for the muscles along his spine were beginning to indicate painful frissons of strain. Wind pushed more violently at his side, undermining his attempts at stability, his plumage ruffling thickly. It had taken him many hours to fly just this far, and the geography of the icescape had meanwhile begun to change. Contours of landscape fell flat as he cruised over level ice sheets.

But, at the farthest end of his vision, he could see something glow.

He adjusted his altitude, descending as he drifted landwards.

Unbelievably, a doorway existed in the fabric of the air itself, about the height of a two-storey building. Pale purple was constantly emitted, darker lines within denoting some kind of grid beyond, as if this manifestation was carved from mathematics. The very air around it vibrated – though that was something that the garuda gauged no human would be able to sense, therefore he would have trouble describing it to the commander. He banked into a circle, staying high enough not to be easily seen, icy wind rippling steadily underneath his hovering torso.

Gathered around the astonishing doorway were several regiments of this new race, rumel leaders riding among them on horseback. Now and then something could be seen amid the purple light, a shimmering silhouette barely noticeable against the sheer brightness; then out of this a single figure would march, becoming more definable against the surrounding snow, sometimes one of the Okun, sometimes a rumel. Where were they coming from and where were they going to next-?

An arrow was suddenly launched from below, and Gybson swerved just in time to see it clip the tip of his wing. Another came after it, but wasn't so close, rising and then falling from the sky, like a dying bird.

He knew when to quit.

Hauling back and up, Flight Lieutenant Gybson retreated to the sanctuary of altitude, and retreated back to base to report.