The Iron jackal

Twenty-Six

What are they waiting for?

Frey had no idea how long the torment had gone on. Minutes? An hour? More? Perhaps it was his imagination, but the torches seemed to be burning with less vigour than before. And all that time, the ghalls had stayed out of sight.

He could hear them. He heard their soft hisses, from behind, to his left and right, overhead. He heard their quiet, hoarse croaks, an occasional distant screech. He caught glimpses of quick scuttling movements, and dusty falls of pebbles that tapped and skittered down the cavern walls. But he never got a look at them.

The dark, he told himself. They’re waiting for the dark.

Progress through the cavern had been slow. The stream had deepened too much to wade through, and the tunnel walls crowded up to the banks so that sometimes they had to edge around protrusions which threatened to push them in. Every metre gained was made with careful treads, in expectation of an attack at any moment. They dared not let their guard down. But the torches were burning low, and the dark was growing stronger. The massive dark that lived underground.

‘Problem,’ said Silo, up ahead. Frey moved closer to the Murthian to see what new obstacle had been put in their path, his pistol ready and eyes scanning the blackness.

He saw the trouble immediately. They’d reached the end of the cavern. The stream they’d been following ran right into the stone and disappeared.

‘Goes under,’ said Silo.

‘Can we swim under with it?’ Frey asked.

Silo pointed meaningfully at his torch.

Frey shook his head at himself. ‘Right, yes. Water puts out fire. I remember.’ He was so jumpy, he wasn’t even thinking straight any more.

Silo moved the torch around, and found a hole in the wall, a metre off the ground. ‘Way through, maybe,’ he said.

Frey stuck his torch in the hole. Beyond was a tunnel that looked even narrower than the shaft they’d climbed up earlier. He’d barely be able to fit his body into that space.

‘I am not crawling through there,’ Frey said.

There was a chorus of shrieks from the darkness behind him.

‘Although,’ he added hastily, ‘a little light wriggling would probably be okay.’

He pushed himself into the tunnel, moving awkwardly on elbows and knees, his torch and pistol held before him. Belatedly he realised how terrible it would be if this was a dead end, or if something was waiting for them at the end of it, but by then he was in. Silo made a mark on the wall and came cramming in after him.

Real claustrophobia attacked him now. He couldn’t move in any direction but forward. If he’d been certain of a way out at the other end, he might have been able to bear it more easily. But it was just as likely that this narrow passage would pinch closed or bend in a way his body couldn’t follow.

‘You can do it, Cap’n,’ said Silo. ‘Ain’t no worse than what we already climbed through.’

He realised that he’d stopped, paralysed by the thought of being trapped. He took a shuddering breath and got moving again.

He should never have clambered in to this tunnel. He should never have insisted on going with Silo to the settlement, when Silo was clearly trying to save him from the danger. He should never have picked up that bloody relic and got himself cursed. They were just the latest in a long, long line of bad decisions that he could trace all the way back to one moment, the mother of every calamity that had befallen him since.

Running out on Trinica on their wedding day.

I should’ve made up with her. Shouldn’t have left it like I did.

Too late. Far too late. But at least he had Silo here with him. At least there was that.

The tunnel widened out by a fraction. Frey gave heartfelt thanks to Silo’s goddess. He reckoned it was worth currying a bit of divine favour at this point, whether he was Murthian or not.

Eyes and throat burning from the smoke of his torch, he made progress. The tunnel curved to the left, but not lef latestightly enough to jam him. His cutlass caught on the rock for one heart-stopping instant, but it came loose with a tug, and he was off again.

Keep going forward. Keep going forward. He repeated it over and over in his head. It was the only thing stopping him from falling to pieces, and he focused on it furiously.

Then, a sight more wonderful than a hundred chests full of ducats: the end of the tunnel! The cold, black opening would have seemed forbidding in other circumstances, but now it promised freedom, and Frey squirmed towards it as fast as he was able.

He was almost there when a face out of his worst nightmares appeared in the gap. Something that seemed to be all mouth, with double rows of long, thin, transparent teeth gaping wide. It had night-black skin, shiny and wet as a seal’s, and bulbous eyes, like a deep-sea fish he’d seen preserved in a museum once, when he’d been dragged there by Amalicia Thade once upon a time. It was a monster out of prehistory, brutally hammered on evolution’s forge and then tossed aside for more elegant things.

Its jaws gaped as it shrieked at him. Frey yelled in response, panic-fired and put a bullet point blank through its tonsils. It fell away with a puzzled squawk.

‘Cap’n!’ Silo snapped at him, as he began to back up frantically. ‘They’re comin’ in behind us, too!’

It was that, and the realisation that Silo had a flaming torch in his hand, that pushed Frey forward again. He thrust his own torch out before him and poked his head out of the end of the tunnel. It emerged close to the floor, so he scrambled through and then pressed himself against the wall, waving his torch about and aiming every which way.

Silo came hot on his heels. As soon as the Murthian found his feet, he shoved his shotgun one-handed into the tunnel mouth and fired with a deafening boom. A fine spray of blood coughed out of the hole and settled on his cheeks and nose.

‘Should hold ’em for a while,’ he said.

Frey stepped over the ghall that he’d shot, which was lying on its side in a loose tangle of limbs. It was a scrawny thing, its narrow ribcage visible, and it had long, thin arms and legs that ended in webbed digits. It was the size of a child, and its skinny body made its huge jaws seem larger still. Its pupils were enormous and froglike, dilated and blinded by death.

‘I never even heard of anything like this,’ he said to himself.

‘What you don’t know about Samarla could fill a library, Cap’n,’ said Silo.

‘What I don’t know about libraries could fill a library,’ Frey replied. His nose wrinkled in disgust. There was a terrible stench here, too strong to be coming from one small body. ‘Let’s get a look at this place.’ He raisesqut="0" widd his torch, and Silo did the same, adding his light to Frey’s.

The cavern was strewn with bones. Fish bones, animal bones, and that was definitely a human skull right there. Most of them had rotting bits of flesh still attached, and there were chunks of fur and bits of rodents and monkey tails scattered among the carnage. They could see the edge of a black pool, and as their light fell across it, they saw a half-dozen ghalls there, crouched threateningly, with several more slinking out of the water.

‘Well,’ said Frey. ‘This is bollocks.’

More of the creatures were gathering now, emerging from the depths of the cavern where the light didn’t reach. They slunk closer with terrible purpose, hissing quietly. No longer afraid, not in these numbers. Frey and Silo had climbed right into their lair.

‘Don’t shoot ’less they come at you,’ Silo murmured, glancing about. He swung his torch one way and then the other. Shadows lunged as he illuminated the nearby folds and cracks in the rock, but Frey saw nothing that might have been a way out. Croaks and shrieks were coming from the blood-splashed hole they’d entered through. As he watched, a ruined tangle of bodies was pushed out of the hole to slop nauseatingly on to the floor, and more ghalls crawled through.

A grim feeling settled on him, dampening his fear, stifling regret and remorse. The kind of feeling he got when all his choices disappeared, and there was only do or die. Or, in this case, do and die. But under the influence of this morbid sense of the inevitable, death didn’t mean anything. It was just a word to him now.

Time to fight, until he couldn’t.

There was a splash as a ghall broke out of the water, and a rapid slapping of wet feet. He swung his torch towards the sound. The creature came fast, but not fast enough. He straightened his arm and shot it through the chest. Its charge became a tumble and it fetched up in a heap near his feet. Frey booted its corpse in the chops for good measure.

The others didn’t seem fazed by the death of their companion, or startled by the noise. They circled like careful predators around a wounded beast, probing warily and then pulling away. Frey and Silo retreated before them, stepping backwards over cracked bones and rancid flesh.

His arse bumped against the wall of the cavern, and he realised he could retreat no further. They were hemmed in. The ghalls at the edge of the torchlight seemed to have multiplied, an audience of savage, lipless faces with masses of backward-slanting teeth for catching and ripping. There had to be two dozen at least, slipping from the water or clambering over the rocks like grotesque salamanders.

‘Silo,’ he said. ‘Reckon we’re surrounded.’

Silo made a tutting noise. He jammed his torch into a gap in the rock behind them, freeing his other hand, then chambered a new round into hi rouo; s lever-action shotgun.

Frey took stock. Two bullets left in his first revolver. A full one in his belt, and the cutlass too. The need to hold the torch was a handicap, but he wouldn’t relinquish the light. Not for anything.

He spat on the ground. ‘I’d love to see the Iron Jackal’s face when he finds out I’m already dead,’ he said with half a grin. ‘Now that’s irony.’

‘No it ain’t, Cap’n. It’s just some shit that happened.’

‘That there is the best description of my life I ever heard,’ Frey said. ‘You do have a way of getting to the heart of things, old mate.’

Silo looked at him, as if surprised by such an expression of affection. Frey was surprised himself, but he didn’t think it mattered much now.

‘Good knowin’ you, Frey.’

Frey gave him a rueful smile. ‘Kinda wish we’d done it sooner, huh?’

Silo shrugged. ‘It’s how it is.’ He nodded at Frey’s pistol. ‘You savin’ a bullet for yourself?’

‘Nah.’

‘Me, either.’

One of the ghalls opened its jaws and made a long, low croak, which was taken up by the others. It rose and gathered until it became an unearthly screech, a primal battle-cry that rang through the cavern and pounded at their ears with its hideous discord.

Frey raised his revolver and shot the two ghalls nearest to him, just to shut them up.

As if that were a signal, the ghalls attacked. Silo’s shotgun boomed. Three of the creatures were caught in the blast, pulverised into a soggy mass of wrecked flesh. Frey dropped his pistol and reached for the other, but somehow his hand found the hilt of his cutlass instead, which had jumped of its own accord into his grip. It was a better idea than the pistol anyway, he reckoned, so he pulled it free. It swung out in a vicious arc towards a ghall that was springing through the air towards him, and halved the creature diagonally from collar to hip. One of the chunks thumped into Frey’s shoulder and spun off, but he was already into his next swing by then. The sword led his arm, and he could only do his best to go with it.

Silo’s shotgun roared again and again, cutting swathes through the ghalls. They were soft-skinned and easily shredded, but they were fast and nimble and came from everywhere. Frey dodged and sliced and thrust, fending off the ghalls with his torch while his sword hand was busy. They feared the flames, but only enough to make them hop back a little and find a new place to strike. Fresh corpses were sprawled among the old, bleeding over the bones. But more appeared, attacking randomly and without coordination, and more after that.

To Frey’s right, Silo fired again, and something clicked in his head. Five shells. He’s out.

‘Take my pistol!’ he snapped, sidestepping so Silo could reach it. Silo didn’t need telling twice. He dropped his shotgun and snatched the pistol from Frey’s belt, bringing it up in time to shoot another ghall that came springing out of the dark.

‘Come on then, you toothy little bastards!’ Frey yelled. He was suddenly angry. Rage was flooding in to fill the void that was left in the absence of fear. He was angry that he should die down here, angry that his life would be left so unfinished, angry at the bullshit set of circumstances that had condemned him to finish things in the dark. And by damn, he was gonna take it out on somebody.

Perhaps, in some dim way, they understood the challenge in his voice, because they came at him in numbers then, and Frey was glad of it. Let’s have this over with. Teeth gritted, he let the blade take him, hacking left and right as they scrabbled and sprang. He felt webbed hands scratching at his body, clawing his clothes, but he threw them aside and stabbed them, or shoved his torch in their faces. Everywhere he glimpsed movement, horrors swarming from the flickering shadows. But his cutlass knew its business, and drenched itself in the thin, salty blood of the ghalls.

Some automatic part of his mind had been counting the shots from his revolver, and he heard the last one ring out with a solemn finality. Something heavy knocked into Frey’s off-hand and sent the torch tipping from his grip. He reached after it, but in doing so he exposed his arm from behind the protection of his blade. One of the creatures appeared from nowhere, snatching at him with eager hands, jaws snapping. He pulled his arm hard out of the way, but not entirely: teeth slashed down his bicep in a sharp flood of pain before he flung the damned thing off and beheaded it.

He looked for his torch, but it had rolled away along the wet cavern floor. Its last light underlit a trio of fang-stuffed faces, like daemons out of some macabre children’s tale. Then the flame died, and he couldn’t see them any more.

Silo pulled down the torch that he’d jammed into the rock, and backed up against Frey. He had only a dagger in his other hand now. It was a pitiful defence against these monsters, but it was the only one they had left.

The ghalls drew back, perhaps sensing that their prey was weakening, perhaps fearing Frey’s blade. Silo and Frey, breathing hard, stood in their diminished island of torchlight, their faces and chests spattered with gore.

The battle was suspended for a few moments, but it was a few moments only. The ghalls still surrounded them. It was a temporary reprieve, and the end was inevitable as it ever was. man"›But then ‘Is that light? ’ Frey said.

It was light! Torchlight, illuminating the mouth of a tunnel on another wall of the cavern, that had been hidden in the blackness till now. Torchlight, and the sound of running feet, and ‘Hey!’ Frey yelled, with a volume he didn’t know he possessed. ‘In here! In here!’

The ghalls turned their faces towards the new intruders. Voices were calling out in Murthian. The torchlight brightened and flared as they came into view, four, five, six of them, running into the cavern, weapons in their hands.

At their head was Ehri. She barked a command in Murthian and the newcomers opened fire. Rifles cracked and shotguns boomed. Someone threw out a phosphorous flare and furious white light swelled to fill the cavern.

Frey was horrified at what it revealed. The place was aswarm, infested with ghalls, racing about like cockroaches caught in the sudden glow of an electric bulb. It was a scene from one of the hells of the old pre-Awakener religions: prancing grotesques threw shadow-shapes against the walls of some terrible subterranean pit.

But despite the ghalls’ superior numbers, they were in disarray. The newcomers stormed into them and they fled, slipping through holes in the rock or sliding into the great black pool in the centre of the cavern. Frey hacked at the occasional ghall who strayed too close to him, but they were too busy trying to get away to pay him much mind now. They were just animals in the end, and the panic spread fast. In minutes, only dead ghalls remained within the range of the flare.

Frey let the tip of his bloody cutlass sink to the ground. He was unable to believe that he was still breathing. Dazedly he gathered up his pistols and put them in his belt, but the effort of standing up and the plummeting adrenaline in his body made his legs give way, and he would have fallen over if Silo hadn’t caught him and helped him up.

Once the ghalls were gone, Ehri hurried across the chamber, accompanied by the man Frey had seen her with before, who he assumed was her lover. They both embraced Silo with quick and rough hugs.

I wasn’t sure you would show, Silo said in Murthian.

I wasn’t sure you would be here when we did, Ehri replied.

Akkad will kill you all.

He won’t get the chance, said Ehri, her eyes hard. ~ Tonight we will finish what you started. Tonight we will end him.