The Fallen (37 page)

The wild-eyed Inquisitor battered the wolf to one side with the butt of his rifle and vaulted the wall, dashing down the cobbled passageway as fast as his booted feet would carry him.

He sprinted into the small courtyard where Düül had set up his position of command within the city to direct his men. Three alleyways fed the darkened yard, buildings encircling all sides, making the central location perfect for directing tactics.

“There's Hombre Lobo all across Rome, Grand Inquisitor!” the Inquisitor cried, his hands on his knees gasping for breath, the side of his face raked by claws. “They're everywhere, but we are winning on the southern and western sides. From the east, their numbers are greater than we expected. And we are being slowed by having to burn bodies and hide evidence from the citizens of the city.”

A howl came from the street out of which the Inquisitor had appeared and moments later a vast wolf bounded in. Instantly Grand Inquisitor Düül's revolver was in his hand and the barrel flashed. The beast vaulted forward and turned over, coming to a dead stop at their feet.

“One less,” muttered Düül. “What are you doing here anyway?” he demanded of the Inquisitor, peering down on him with a scowl. “Not just to report to me, surely? Have you found Tacit?”

The Inquisitor nodded, stepping away from the prostrate wolf to put a little distance between him and creature. “Apparently someone matching his description has been spotted.”

“Where?”

“The church of Santa Maria della Concezione. He told me to come and find you.”

Düül's scimitar flashed from his hilt and he held the bloodstained blade up to the light. “It ends tonight,” he said. “It ends by my hand.”

SEVENTY FOUR

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

One side of the room exploded in fire and debris and noise. Everything shook and seemed to move very far away. It appeared to Tacit as if he had fallen into the earth, the air becoming heavy and hot. The table had been turned on its side, the map ripped and torn, half covering Isabella who lay close by, while Henry sat upright next to her, pointing at his boot which had been blasted to a burnt, bloody mess. He was saying something, but Tacit couldn't understand the words. Another explosion rocked the room.

“Find them,” Tacit heard a voice command within the maddening confusion as Inquisitors flooded into the room. He was on his feet and bounding over the table, landing among the attackers in a matter of seconds, his great arms battering and pummelling all within reach. Gunfire erupted, but he paid it no mind, ploughing into the middle of the shocked Inquisitors, breaking jaws and splitting skulls with his hammer-like fists.

A grenade was tossed and the room flashed with light, filling moments later with smoke and the choking smell of cordite. Tacit began searching for Isabella and Henry, trying to regain his bearings. A figure swam into view and Tacit grappled him around the neck, breaking it easily and letting him fall, snatching the Inquisitor's rifle as he did so.

“Isabella!” he cried, stumbling blindly through the fog, knowing the overturned table was nearby. More gunfire sounded and something bit into his thigh. He roared in pain and turned to unleash two returning rounds from his rifle. Someone cried out ahead of him and fell to the ground. Isabella appeared through the haze, coughing, and he clutched hold of her, drawing her close. Her head was cut, blood streaking down one side of her face, but otherwise she looked unharmed. There was a wild look about her and at first Tacit thought she had been driven mad from the assault, until her hand slipped to his holster and she took out his revolver. Their eyes met and Isabella's flashed.

“Like I said,” she said, raising the revolver, “you never leave me behind again!”

She peeled away from him and fired at the first shape she saw wandering out of the smoke. The Inquisitor was thrown backwards, going down with a cry.

“Where's Henry?” asked Tacit, taking the rifle from his shoulder and ejecting the spent cartridge.

“Here!” Henry called, hobbling through the slowly dissipating smoke, before turning and battering an Inquisitor full in the face with the butt of his rifle. “It's no use!”, he shouted, stooping low as gunfire buffeted the walls behind them, his weight set on his right foot to protect his blasted boot. “There's too many of them!” At that moment, three Inquisitors swam into view and Tacit shot two through the head with the rifle, Henry wrestling the third by his collar onto the floor. Isabella's gun flashed and another Inquisitor collapsed as he ran towards them through the swirling mist. Henry dragged himself slowly to his feet, shaking the pain out of his bleeding knuckles. “We can't win this!”

“Rubbish!” cried Tacit, taking the smoking barrel of the rifle in his hands and wielding it like a club. “Just more bodies for the crypts! Follow me and stay close!” He waded deeper into the smoke, Henry and Isabella in his wake. He took an Inquisitor, who saw Tacit too late, in the throat with a round, and then another in the eye, blowing the rear of his skull out. “The door!” Tacit called, spotting its dark outline. “Let's make for the door!” He battled his way towards it, any Inquisitors in his path bludgeoned down, Henry and Isabella picking off any who stepped close enough to be spotted through the smoke. They broke out into the street, eyes stinging, rasping breaths straining at the clean air outside. Dawn was a vague pink smudge on the horizon. A line of Inquisitors faced them from the buildings and streets opposite, each one with his gun trained on them.

“Drop your weapons!” one of them cried, as Tacit pushed Henry and Isabella back into the smoked-out ruin.

“No way through!” he warned, dropping to his haunches, “We're trapped!”

The night was suddenly filled with the sound of howls, a tumultuous noise that shredded nerves and bowed bodies, spreading fear deep within everyone who heard it. Inquisitors looked at each other, confused and alarmed, fingering their weapons clumsily in their hands. They'd been assured that the wolves had been cleared from this part of the city, disposed of.

And then the vast feral creatures came, tearing like a grey black wave into the road, enveloping the Inquisitors in their stinking monstrous tide. Gunfire erupted, but screams and the tearing of flesh soon overwhelmed the sound. From everywhere, it seemed, huge wolves appeared, from side-streets, from rooftops, from out of the sewers. And everything turned grey and crimson and black.

“Hombre Lobo!” wept the cries, as Tacit shouted “Go!” from the doorway in which they crouched, watching the carnage unfold. He pushed them back into the clearing fog of the building behind them. “Go! Go! Get out of here!”

They sprinted blindly through the house, Inquisitors now running with them, out into the back-street beyond, not daring for a moment to pause, not daring to look back at the carnage and destruction left behind by Sandrine and the wolves she had brought with her.

SEVENTY FIVE

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

There was a long line of mules to the left of Pablo, twelve of them linked together by a rope, being guided by soldiers positioned at the shoulder of every other animal. Not that they need guiding, it seemed to Pablo. Like him, like all the soldiers of the Italian Third Army, there seemed only one way they could go: up, towards the noise and smoke and violence.

They were laden down with goods of all kinds, boxes of food, ammunition, picks and tools, cooking pots and utensils precariously strapped to their backs as they sure-footedly followed the vague path in the mountain-side, all clanking and knocking about, the sound reminding him of goat herds in the hills of Riano.

Pablo had fallen in with a ragged unit of infantrymen going up the mountain. They'd not seen any action in hours, although ahead of them he heard rifle-fire, and behind him the Staff Sergeant bawled in his ear when he suspected that the unit was slouching and not making progress fast enough. The Sergeant seemed to have picked Pablo out for special treatment and struck him every now and then across the shoulders and back, making him turn around constantly to see when the next blow was coming.

On an almost vertical shard of rock Pablo saw a field gun teetering, one wheel having vanished over the side of the mountain completely, the drop a thousand feet to the twisting valley below. All around, tall muscular men,
stripped to the waist, battled to heave the precious small-calibre artillery piece out of danger. The Italian army had too few of these guns and to lose one this way would be a tragedy, far more than the loss of a man, or even a unit of men. Watching them try to save the gun, shouting and straining, gesticulating and rushing this way and that to tie ropes and set themselves against the wheels, Pablo realised that a man's place had been reduced to less than a piece of hardware. Or perhaps each one of them was nothing more than a piece of hardware for the war effort, something to move and lug and shoot and kill? And die.

The gun faltered and slipped back. Someone gave a cry and instinctively every man trying to drag the gun to safety sprang clear. The rope tied to the mule at the head went tight. The beast dug in its hooves, but it was battling against a half-ton gun and gravity. The gun slipped back further, the mule tumbled after it and then both gun and animal vanished over the edge. Everyone who had tried to save the artillery piece rushed to the edge in time to see it crash and break apart on the rocks below.

“Fuck it to hell!” someone shouted, and the bare-chested artillerymen circled the ground for a little while, inspecting the spot where they had lost their piece, appearing unsure what to do now they didn't have a weapon to drag to the summit.

One mile behind the front line, a small assembly of black figures stepped to the side of the mangled remains of a cannon and its mule and continued up the mountain path.

SEVENTY SIX

R
OME
. I
TALY
.

Grand Inquisitor Düül pushed the broad wooden door to the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini open and stood back, his gun tight to his side, his eyes glued to the darkness beyond. From the palisade he had climbed to reach the door, he could hear the dwindling sounds of gunfire and howls across the city, but in front of him all was quiet within the church.

He stood at the doorway listening, watching, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light from the flickering candles and the silver moonlight streaming through the high windows above.

“Tacit?” the white-robed man called, lifting his head to hear, sniffing at the air like a dog. “Tacit? I know you're here.”

There was no reply, nothing but the echo of his voice. For a moment he thought about backing out of the church and returning to his command within the city. But his curiosity overwhelmed him and he stepped forward, his hobnailed boots grating on the marble floor.