Iron Jackal (72 page)

Silo went to the break in the bridge and looked over. Colden had been behind him when the bridge went. He wasn’t there now. He felt a detached sort of regret, but he was more concerned with his own people.

The Juggernaut was moving away from them, but the ground still shook with its footsteps. Silo heard a crunch behind him, and saw a new crack appear in the floor.

‘This place ain’t safe,’ he said. ‘Everybody off the bridge.’

Pinn helped Ashua up, muttering jealously about her new sling. Silo went to Samandra, after checking that Bess was doing what she was told. Malvery followed him.

‘Colden!’ Samandra cried. The desperation was plain on her face. ‘Colden! Answer me, damn it!’

‘He gone,’ said Silo.

‘He’s down there somewhere! We need to go back! Find a way down!’

Silo was impassive. ‘I ain’t riskin’ my people. He ain’t one of us. Nor are you.’

‘Then
I’ll
go!’

‘You ain’t in no state to save anyone. And this bridge could be comin’ down any moment.’

He put his arm under her to take her weight, but she fought him. ‘Colden!’ she called over his shoulder.

‘I’ll go,’ said Malvery.

‘He ain’t one of us,’ Silo said again, firmly.

But Malvery had that look on his face, a look that Silo knew well. Like a man who just had to do a thing.

Samandra gazed at the doctor with feverish hope. ‘Please!’

‘I’ll go,’ said Malvery again, hefting his shotgun.

Silo knew there was no more to be said. He wouldn’t order the man. Malvery wouldn’t obey if he did. There was only so much responsibility you could take for another man’s life; after that, it was all down to them.

‘We’ll wait for you at the pad, long as we can,’ he said.

‘See you there,’ said Malvery, and headed off.

Silo lifted Samandra’s weight again, more roughly than he needed to. He was suddenly angry with her. For getting injured, for asking Malvery to save her companion, for putting one of the crew in danger.

‘Satisfied now, Miss Bree?’ he said. ‘Now get movin’, or you gonna end up down there with your partner if this bridge goes.’

For once, Samandra Bree had no comeback. She leaned on him and hopped alongside, white-faced and silent.

Forty-Seven

A Long Walk – Foreign Object – The Boulevard – Malvery versus the Crew

M
alvery huffed and puffed as he scrambled down an incline of vines and rubble. It had taken him longer than he’d thought to find a way back to the street under the bridge. While he’d been following Silo, he hadn’t paid attention to how complex and strange these Azryx paths were. He was already wondering if he’d be able to find his way back.

Not too far away, there was a huge explosion from the power station, loud in the night. He cast a worried glance at it and hurried onward.

If Colden hadn’t been obliterated in the blast – which, to be honest, he probably
had
– then he’d have fallen into the foliage beneath the bridge. It was a long way down, but branches and vines made for a better landing than most surfaces. While there was a chance, Malvery had to look.

He had no special love for the man. In fact, he barely knew him, and Grudge had been an enemy as often as an ally. But that didn’t matter. There was a rightness to what he was doing, a certainty of purpose that propelled him forward. That man was a Century Knight, one of the Archduke’s loyal elite. The cream of Vardic warriors. And he was damned if he’d leave a soldier of his country behind.

He stopped to catch his breath. If only he didn’t drink quite so bloody much. If only he’d stayed in shape. But all those soft years in Thesk had made him sluggardly, and in the years that followed he’d been more interested in booze than exercise.

Well, he might have the body of a fat bastard, but he had the heart of a young man. A young man who’d gone to war for his country once. A young man who’d been betrayed by the old man that succeeded him.

Angered by that thought, he stormed on, calling Colden’s name. A Sammie soldier burst out of the undergrowth, attracted by the noise, waving his rifle. He was a young man too, and he seemed startled to find an overweight Vard with a flowing white moustache and round, green-lensed glasses perched on his nose. Maybe he’d never seen one before. His hesitation meant he never got a chance to see one again.

Malvery cranked a new round into his shotgun and walked on. The bridge was almost overhead now. Despite Silo’s misgivings, it hadn’t collapsed yet. The Juggernaut was still somewhere nearby, ripping up the city. Malvery did his best to ignore it.

Out on the battlefield, you couldn’t think about all the dangers around you. If you did, you’d be paralysed. Every man knew they might be hit by a shell or nailed by a sniper at any moment, and they’d never see it coming. It didn’t matter how careful you were, or how highly trained. It was blind bloody chance. You just had to get on with it.

He found Grudge at the foot of a tree, barely suspended in a cradle of vines, a dark shape in the moon-shadows. There were broken branches all around him, and his autocannon lay nearby. Malvery put fingers to his throat and felt for a pulse.

‘Blimey,’ he said.

He checked him over for broken bones, but all he found was a lump on his head the size of an egg, buried beneath his shaggy hair. He tilted Grudge’s head towards the silvery light and peeled back the eyelids, looking for blood in the whites. Then he slapped him a couple of times to see if it would get any reaction.

Head trauma. Possible skull fracture. He might wake up in a minute, or never. Maybe he’s already dead, but his heart and lungs ain’t worked it out yet.

‘Let’s get you out of all that armour, then,’ he said. ‘ ’Cause you can bet your arse I ain’t carryin’ you in that.’

Armour or no armour, he hadn’t gone far before he realised exactly how heavy a man who stood over two metres tall could be. Malvery had always been strong, with a bulk that belied the delicacy of his profession, but he suspected that he’d overestimated himself this time. He’d been taken with visions of pulling a Century Knight’s fat out of the fire, just like he’d done with those soldiers in the First Aerium War. Belatedly he remembered that he’d been in his prime back then, fit from Army training, and those men he’d saved had all been a good sight smaller than Grudge.

His legs burned. His back ached. He’d barely gone a hundred metres.

Gonna be a long walk.

There was no point backtracking; he’d never catch up with Silo. He decided to make his own way.

The streets were confusing, always curving, sloping, splitting into different levels. The Azryx seemed frustratingly fond of dead ends. Malvery kept having to readjust his heading, navigating by glimpses of the landing pad between the buildings. The Juggernaut was still nearby, but thankfully its attention seemed to be focused in another direction. The sound of collapsing walls was an almost constant background noise, and Malvery tensed every time he heard the steadily climbing squeal that heralded another blast from the cannon. Gunfire floated up from the streets as the Sammies fought back.

He put his head down and kept going. All he could do was put one foot in front of the other and hope no one – no
thing
– noticed him.

After a short time, which seemed like an age, he found himself standing on the edge of an enormous plaza. He knew this place; he’d seen it earlier. It was the Samarlan base camp, where dozens of tents had been set up as barracks, command centres and the like. The hub of the Sammies’ operation.

Where there had once been orderly rows of tents, now there were only smoking rags, flapping in the rising thermals. The burnt-pork stink of cooked human flesh was thick in the air. The debris of a military encampment was everywhere: blackened stoves, melted weaponry, scorched foot lockers. To either side of the plaza was a trench of rubble that cut through the surrounding buildings, marking the path of the Juggernaut’s beam.

Malvery stared for a moment, rocked by the raw power of the thing.

The author of the devastation was lumbering across his path, several streets away, searching for new targets. Its smooth white armour sparked now and then as bullets bounced off it. Beyond it, a short way upslope, was the landing pad, rising like some ancient tree above the city.

He deliberated a moment, catching his breath, then struck out across the plaza. To go around would be a detour he wasn’t sure he could manage. He was hot and damp and red-faced, every muscle hurt, and he didn’t know how much he had left in his legs. It frightened him to be so exposed with that thing nearby, but there it was. No help for it.

He just had to hope the damned thing didn’t look his way.

He staggered on through the wreckage of the camp. The smell of burnt bodies seeped its way down the back of his throat. They lay bundled up among the tatters of the tents, curled in on themselves or clawing grotesquely at the sky. There must have been a lot of Sammies here when it got hit.

The carnage didn’t much bother him. He’d seen enough bodies in his time as a medic. After a while they became like dead trees or blasted vehicles: just another part of the battlefield scenery.

He was most of the way across the plaza when he saw something he recognised. Something that shouldn’t have been there. He came to an unsteady halt.

It was the shape of it that caught his eye. A cluster of straight lines and regular circles amid a landscape of bent and broken things. A bright emblem of gold, glinting in the light of a nearby fire. It was set into a small metal box lying amid a scattering of curled papers that skidded and rolled in the updrafts from the baked surface of the plaza. He glanced up at the Juggernaut, which had turned away from him.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he said to the man on his back. ‘Gonna have to put you down a minute.’

He let Grudge slide off his back and laid him on the ground as gently as he could. After a quick moment to examine his patient, who still showed no signs of waking, he walked painfully over to the box. He winced as he bent down to pick it up.

It was still hot to the touch, and the gold of the emblem had melted slightly. It was a document case, often used to protect and secure precious letters and files in transit. He tried to open it, but it was locked. He turned it around, looking for clues, but there was nothing to be seen but the emblem. Six circles, joined by interlocking lines. It was something every Vard grew up seeing in the towns and cities of their homeland, and tattooed on the foreheads of the faithful.

The Cipher. The symbol of the Awakeners.

But what’s it doing here?

He stared at the emblem, and felt a cold certainty that the answer to that question would open doors he might never be able to shut. But before he could consider it further, he heard the sharp crack of a rifle, and a bullet splintered a nearby tent pole.

He looked up and saw two soldiers on the far side of the plaza. One of them was just raising his rifle; the other was aiming again.

He swore under his breath and ran back to Grudge – though it was more of an agonised jog – taking the document case with him. He hauled Grudge across his back in a fireman’s carry, gritted his teeth and tried to stand.

The strain was incredible. Picking him up a second time was twice as hard as the first. His muscles were already fatigued, his back ached, and he’d be damned lucky if he got out of this without a slipped disc and a double hernia. But still he lifted, driven by a strength he didn’t know he possessed, and somehow he found his feet.

‘You,’ he puffed, ‘are one dead weight son of a bitch.’

He set off as fast as his legs could carry them, the document case clutched in one hand. The Sammies were shouting behind him and more bullets whined through the air, but they’d have to be better shots than that to hit him at such a distance.

Of course, they wouldn’t need to be such good shots once they caught him up.

He couldn’t let himself worry about it. Couldn’t even look behind with Grudge draped across his shoulders like a fallen bear. All he could do was stumble towards the edge of the plaza.

It didn’t even occur to him to leave Grudge behind.

Beyond, the streets resumed, winding ways bordered by white ceramic dwellings that flowed into each other like blown glass. He blinked sweat from his eyes. He felt like he was at the limit of his strength. He’d felt like that for a while now. Yet somehow momentum carried him on, even though his legs trembled and his neck hurt and his spine felt like it was being crushed. Any minute now, he’d be shot, but there was no help for that. All he could do was prolong the moment as much as he could.

Ahead, the rattle of a machine gun. A building fell in an avalanche of rubble nearby. The Juggernaut was close. He caught sight of it through a gap in the buildings. The curved alley he’d chosen was taking him right towards it.

No help for that, either.

At the end of the alley he halted. A wide boulevard lay in front of him like a still river in the yellow glow of the electric lights. On the far side, more alleys.

It sounded like he was almost on top of the machine gun, so he peered out. To the left, in the middle of the boulevard, a dozen Sammies had set up behind a barricade of fallen debris. To the right was the Juggernaut, turning into the street, dragging a slithering slope of rubble with it. The machine gun kept up a hail of bullets, shredding the air along the boulevard, as the creature swung its head towards them.