The City (3 page)

There were dead rats, and cats, and the half-eaten bodies of dogs washed up on the shores. But they saw no more human corpses. Bartellus guessed the layers of grilles stopped large bodies floating this way. He thought back to the corpse and its tattoos. A memory nudged again at his brain, but he failed to catch it and it fled away.

His thoughts were idling in the past when he realized the Dwellers all stood listening. He could hear little above the sound of rushing water. Then he heard it too – a far-distant banging as of a hundred saucepans being struck like gongs.

‘Rain!’ shouted Malvenny, and the Dwellers started to hurry back the way they had come, discarding precious sieves, rakes and trowels, carrying only torches in their haste to get away.

Anny-Mae grabbed Bartellus’ arm. Her face was anxious. ‘This shore will flood in a trice,’ she told him. ‘We must scurry.’

Bartellus saw the children were in front of them as they streamed back along the crumbling path, hurrying with care on the treacherous footing. ‘What was the noise?’ he asked Anny-Mae’s back.

‘Dwellers high above,’ the woman told him, watching her steps, struggling as fast as she could on tiny feet. ‘They bang the drain covers when it rains. Warn us all.’

Bartellus realized the stream they were following was rising as he watched. When they had travelled this way earlier it had been far below them. Now it was swirling just below the lip of the path, its surface foaming and roiling with grey froth and big bubbles which burst slowly and stickily. And he became aware they were still travelling down.

‘This is downwards!’ he cried, but Anny-Mae was too busy hurrying and watching her feet to answer him.

The children were quickly losing ground from the rest of the party, whose torches were flickering far ahead. The little girl suddenly slithered as her feet hit a slimy patch of pathway, and her legs went out from under her. She slid feet first towards the stream. Elija grabbed at her, but he was hampered by the torch he carried, and he missed and fell too. In the last moment, as the girl slipped helplessly to the
edge, Bartellus snatched her stick-like arm and pulled her up and into his chest. She was tiny, weighing less than a good sword. He looked into her white face. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, beyond terror and exhaustion.

The boy climbed to his feet and stopped in front of them, forcing Bartellus to halt. Anny-Mae pushed past, chasing the rest of the group, now gone from view. Elija glared up at Bartellus. The old soldier gazed down at him calmly, then said, ‘I will carry her. Let me help.’ Elija didn’t move, and his face was set. Bartellus nodded his head the way they were going. ‘Move along, boy,’ he growled.

Elija turned and ran on, more quickly, and Bartellus raced to catch up with him, for the boy still held the torch.

When they caught up with the group, Bartellus’ heart sprang into his mouth. They had arrived at the convergence of two mighty tunnels. Fresh water – he could smell it – thundered down a second drain, carrying lightly its burden of branches and other debris. It joined their rising sewer in a crash of tormented water roiling with debris.

A flimsy rope-and-plank bridge spanned the maelstrom. It was the only way. By the hectic torchlight Bart could see the water was foaming round the bridge, the drooping centre under water. Yet the first man was already making his way across, clinging to the ropes, dragging himself along, half drowned by the flood water. The others were ready to follow him.

As Elija ran up, Malvenny thrust the boy on to the bridge, taking his torch. ‘Go, boy!’ he shouted. Elija looked to his sister and hesitated, and another man thrust himself in front of him and jumped on the bridge, discarding his torch. Anny-Mae pushed the boy on to the bridge, then followed him, smacking him in the back. Elija cast a glance at his sister then grabbed the submerged ropes and started dragging himself across.

Malvenny, holding the last torch, yelled in Bartellus’ ear. ‘The bridge’ll go any moment! When it does hold on to rope or wood. Don’t let go!’

Bartellus stepped on to the bridge, which bucked and reared like a maddened cavalry horse. He felt the little girl’s arms creep round his neck and tighten, and he grasped the ropes with both hands. Then he was submerged in the foaming water. In an instant all feeling left him. He could not breathe, could not tell which was up or down. He
could not feel anything beneath his feet, or the girl’s body against his chest, only rough rope under his hands.

Then the bridge gave way and he felt himself swept into darkness, a piece of flotsam in the turbulent water. He gripped rope and plank, then he squeezed his eyes shut and prayed for the life of the little girl.

In his dreams he often found himself in a lush green valley. On the far-away horizon grey mountains were capped with sparkling snow. He was on his knees in thick wet grass, each blade fat with drops of dew, and he ran his hands through its coolness. Then he would raise wet hands to his face and clean away the sweat and blood and the pain. He would stand then, and look around. There was no one to be seen, no beasts, no birds. The air was fresh, as if it had never been used. He wondered if it was the dawn of the world.

He had asked a fortune-teller once whether the dream had meaning. The wizened old man, small as a child, had pitched his tent at the rear of an army as they waited to do battle, although Bartellus could not remember which army or which battle. The man did steady business throughout the night as frightened soldiers sought comfort before facing the new day.

‘The valley is where you were born, general,’ the old man had said to him, grinning with ruined teeth. ‘The meaning is clear. Green speaks of fertility, and the valley represents a woman. Your birth was blessed by the gods. You will live long, have many sons and return to the valley before you die.’ He glanced over Bartellus’ shoulder, already seeking the next customer’s copper.

But the general stayed seated and scowled. ‘Your words are not clear to me, old one,’ he said. ‘Is the valley my mother, or is it where I was born?’

‘Both,’ the oldster replied smoothly. ‘The green valley—’

‘For,’ Bartellus cut across his words, ‘I was born on the desolate plain of Garan-Tse, in the midst of the Third Battle of the Vorago. My mother’s cries were echoed by the screams of dying men and there was only blood and mud for leagues in every direction.’

The old man squinted at him irritably. ‘It is a representational valley,’ he explained. ‘All men are born in blood and pain. But you are surrounded by fertility. You have sons?’ Bartellus nodded. ‘And you are wealthy?’ When Bartellus nodded again, the old man shrugged. ‘Then you are a lucky man.’

’Most men would not call me lucky,’ Bartellus growled.

‘You are a general, general,’ the fortune-teller argued mildly. ‘And you are alive. Most men would not call you
un
lucky.’

A million drains sucked the rain down, channelling it through the ancient system of pipes and ducts, culverts and channels, drawing it deep beneath the City. Most of the water made it through the wide drains into the great river Menander which drove through the City’s bowels. A weight of rain filtered through layers of the City’s history, deep down to where the sewers were crushed and broken, squeezed flat by the weight of time. A thousand branches, washed into culverts and through broken grilles, scoured the walls of the sewers, washing away the dirt and debris of years, and for a while, a few days, the Halls were cleansed of filth and the smell was of grass and good earth.

On its perch on top of the Eating Gate, the gulon stretched its paws and laid its scrawny length along a piece of timber. Through slitted eyes it watched as scores of Dwellers were swept under the rolling barrels of the gate and pulverized. It closed its eyes and slept.

The boy Elija was dragging himself step by step across the thrashing bridge when it was torn apart by the stormwaters. His only fears were for his sister. I cannot rescue her if I die, he thought, and he clung desperately to a wooden plank and tried to survive. For a long time he was battered and flung about by the water, then at last he stopped moving and he realized he could breathe. He gratefully took a painful lungful of air, his thin chest sore and bruised. Opening his eyes, he found he was in total darkness. He was upside down and entangled in ropes, perhaps the ropes of the bridge. He could still hear the crash of water close by. Anxiously he tried to move his arms and legs. Everything ached, but nothing appeared broken. He could move, but he could not free himself. And if I
do
get free, he thought, where will I go in the dark?

Trussed like a goat for sacrifice, hanging helpless from the wall of a sewer in total darkness deep in the bowels of the City, the little boy started to cry.

When Bartellus rose to consciousness he knew instantly that the atmosphere had changed. Gone was the stifling fetid odour that had pressed on his senses for wretched days beyond counting. Now
the air was lighter, and smelled of wet hay, rotten fruit, smoke and, faintly, flowers. He lay on his back, his body an old wooden raft barely floating in a sea of pain. There was a weight on his chest and, when he opened his eyes and stretched his neck, he saw it was the little girl, motionless. He thought she was dead, but when he tried to sit his involuntary groan woke her and she scrambled away from him, eyes huge in her pinched white face.

Then the girl gazed up and around her, and for the first time it occurred to Bartellus that he could see. They were in a round stone chamber. Torches in brackets cast moving shadows on the dripping walls. There were black and white pictures on those walls, faint and faded, of soaring birds and flying feathers. Bartellus and the girl were on a sturdy ledge high above the stream, which glided in a deep channel through the centre of the chamber. Bartellus laid his head back and rested for a while, watching the birds as they flickered eerily in the torchlight. He could do no more.

Then he heard a whisper of sound and lifted his head again. Floating like a mirage in the deserts of the south, a cloaked and hooded figure walked towards them through the yellow light. All his soldier’s instincts deadened, Bartellus lay vulnerable as the figure approached and stopped before them. The old man saw the tip of a sword blade below the lower edge of the cloak. He thought he ought to move, to defend himself and the child, but he had no power.

‘You are not dead,’ said a woman’s impassive voice, echoing a little off the wet stone. Bartellus was uncertain whether this was intended to reassure or was merely a statement of fact.

‘We were caught by the stormwaters,’ he explained, noting as he said it that an explanation was scarcely necessary. Understandably, the woman did not reply. She loomed over him silently. Her presence was unsettling. He sat up with difficulty. His whole body seemed bruised and his back screamed with pain.

‘This girl needs dry clothes, food in her belly and fresh water to drink,’ he told the woman.

She took a moment to answer. Then she said coolly, ‘I am sure you are right. But why are you telling me?’

Frustration overcame his exhaustion, and a rare spark ignited in his chest.

‘The wretches who live here are the dregs of the City,’ he said. ‘Yet in my experience, young woman, none of them needs it explained
why a half-drowned child needs food and drink and comfort! If you can’t give this girl the help she needs, lead us to whoever can.’

His words sounded pompous, even to him, and the child started to cry. Bartellus realized helplessly that he had frightened her.

The woman gazed at him unmoved. ‘This is not a market stall, or an orphanage, or a hospital,
old man
.’

This time he held his temper. ‘No,’ he told her reasonably, ‘but you are well enough fed, by the look of you, and there is clearly organization here. I cannot believe you are unable to bring this child and a plate of food together. Is this so much to ask?’

‘Why do you think there is organization here?’ the woman asked.

He nodded to the torches. ‘Elsewhere in the Halls any unguarded torch would be stolen within moments. There is authority in this place, and one that is respected.’

She nodded in the darkness of her hood. ‘Very well. Come, child,’ she said, turning away and walking back across the bird-haunted chamber.

The little girl looked to Bartellus, who smiled reassuringly, and she trailed after the woman, glancing back often to see the old man was still there.

When the two had disappeared Bartellus raised himself up with an effort, marvelling that he had no broken bones. He walked to the edge of the stream, where he relieved himself long and luxuriously. Feeling remarkably cheered by this simple act, he followed the woman and child.

As he passed through the circle of torches darkness closed in again, and he blinked the grime out of his eyes until he saw a faint glow. Light was filtering through an archway to his right. There was a barred gate, open, and he passed through it, following the glow until he came to a round chamber lit not by the acrid light of torches but by soft candles, dozens of them. He squinted. All around were stone pillars, their capitals carved in the shapes of perched and watching birds. The room was very old and the stone stares of the carvings weighed down on him.

There was no sign of the girl, but the woman sat on the edge of a wide wooden table. She had thrown her hood back, and her hair was dark red in the torchlight. He saw her face was young, but lines of experience were already gathering the corners of her eyes, which were the violet of flowers. An unsheathed sword lay across her thighs.

‘Where is this place?’ he asked her.

‘The Dwellers call it the Hall of Watchers. They fear to come here. They fear my colleagues and me.’ She laid her hand idly on the sword’s hilt.

His dislike of her rose quickly again, and he told her, ‘If your colleagues are anything like yourself, the Dwellers probably fear sharp tongues more than they fear sharp swords.’

She scowled at him. ‘First you ask for our hospitality, then you insult me?’

He glanced around the room, as if uncaring of her words or sword. On another table lay a jug of water and a platter of meat and biscuits. His stomach lurched with craving. He let his eyes pass casually over the food. He would starve to death before showing his need to this odious girl.