The Blood Debt Part 40

*I have no idea what you think I did to you, but calling each other names solves nothing.'

The bandit pushed the Homunculus into motion. It staggered forward like a sleepwalker. *This isn't over,' Pirelius said. *We will have a reckoning.'

This the Magister didn't grace with a reply. Her head retreated and the heavy lifter surged smoothly forward.

Sal dropped out of the vision. Someone was shaking his shoulder again. He blinked and focused on the real world.

*What is it?'

Shilly pointed over the interior side of the Wall, a worried look on her face. He was startled by the transformation in the city. Fires were burning where the man'kin had broken through the Wall. Thick smoke belched along the city streets. The city guards had fallen back several blocks as a heavy tide of man'kin filled the streets. Creatures of all sizes and shapes swarmed over the cobbles of Laure, an irresistible ma.s.s of living stone.

The press was formidable. Those man'kin that could escape the crush, did. Some climbed up onto roofs and took station on the eaves, roosting like gargoyles. Others weren't content to sit only a floor or two up. They leapt from building to building, seeking ever-higher vantage points. At least two were scaling towers just a handful of metres away from the Wall itself.

That was a concern. Sal backed away as a large, fat man'kin with a cherubic face climbed hand over hand to the top of a nearby tower, the ease of its movement belying its sheer ma.s.s. From that vantage point, it turned to look at them with dead, stone eyes.

*Oh, s.h.i.t,' said Shilly, gripping Sal's upper arm painfully tight. *I think it's about to -'

She didn't finish as, with a crunch of stone and a roar of effort, the man'kin leapt across the gap between them and onto the Wall.

The Man'kin.

*Earthquakes, bushfires, flash floods, hurricanes: we ignore these signs at our own peril.'

THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 10:24.

R.

un!'

The command came from the leader of the guards, and Skender didn't hesitate to obey. The sight of the giant man'kin - at least four metres high and weighing several tonnes - launching itself from the tower was enough to make him move. The force of its leap was sufficient to topple the tip of the minarette it had been standing on, sending bricks and tiles crashing down onto the streets below. With a deafening crunch, the broad chest of the man'kin struck the edge of the Wall not metres from where he stood. Its fat fingers scrabbled for purchase and caught the guard rail. Metal twisted with a painful squeal but held. Stone ground against stone, and the man'kin hauled itself up onto the roof.

Skender, running almost backwards, hypnotised by the creature's ma.s.sive strength, tripped over the ragged hem of his robe and fell awkwardly onto his side. Shilly shouted something but he couldn't hear her over the heavy thudding of man'kin feet. A guard threw one of the light-globes into its back. Bright energy flashed, followed by a surge of heat so powerful Skender averted his eyes.

*Hold!' shouted the leader of the guards. Skender blinked and looked up into the giant statue's face. It stood over him, so close he could reach out and touch its leg. A globe thrown now was just as likely to kill him, and the first didn't seem to have done any damage at all.

*MAWSON,' the man'kin said in a voice like mountains falling.

*Sal set him free,' Skender protested, scrabbling backwards on his hands and feet.

The man'kin followed as though tied to him with string. Its expression was blankly intimidating. *MAWSON FRIEND.'

*He's our friend, too. He wouldn't want you to hurt us.'

The man'kin shook its head and reached down with one bulbous hand. Skender tried to run but barely made it upright before ma.s.sive stone fingers wrapped around his torso and pulled him into the air.

*No!' Its grip was tight. He could hardly draw breath enough to shout, *Don't!'

*MAWSON FRIEND MUST: Skender felt himself raised up high. He closed his eyes, nerving himself for being dashed to the stone. He thought of Chu and was glad she wasn't there to see this.

*MAWSON FRIEND MUST LOOK.'

The moment of his death didn't come. He remained suspended in the air, firmly contained by the creature's stone fist. His many bruises complained, and for once he was grateful for it. While he hurt, he remained alive.

The man'kin shook him.

*MAWSON FRIEND MUST LOOK NOW!'

The creature's leaden words finally sunk in. Skender opened his eyes. The man'kin held him disconcertingly high above the top of the Wall. The view was almost as impressive as it had been from under Chu's wing. The spreading stain of the man'kin horde darkened the streets below, while the ma.s.s of living stone outside had shrunk to less than a quarter its original size. The twins and their captor cut a straight line through them, with the Magister's heavy lifter following discreetly above.

The man'kin shook him so hard his teeth rattled in his head. The world swung jarringly around him. When it settled down, he was staring to the east, at the Hanging Mountains. The sun was fading into the west, wreathing them in shadow. The ridge of clouds he had seen from the heavy lifter was still banked hard against the distant peaks - a permanent fixture, perhaps - but now something else was visible. A tendril of white led down from the mountains. It looked like the mountains had grown a tail. The tail wound through the foothills and out into the plains, following a zigzag course that reminded him of something he had seen before. It took him a moment to remember where.

The white tendril was following the path of the Divide, as he had seen it from the wing. It wasn't actually white, but dirty brown with a foaming edge. The foam reflected the sky back at him, making it appear bright against the surrounding plain. The leading edge was growing visibly nearer.

*Oh, s.h.i.t,' he said, the enormity of what he was seeing momentarily freezing his capacity for thought.

*Skender?' called Shilly from far below. *Answer me!'

*You can put me down now,' he told the man'kin.

*LOOK?'

Skender took in the face of the giant creature as it deposited him gently back on the Wall. Its face wasn't built for expressiveness, but now he could see that it was worried, not angry.

*Yes,' he said. *I looked, and I saw.' He recalled the man'kin shouting among themselves as they argued over whether or not to kill Sal. The Angel says we must keep moving, one had said. And the stone pig that had spoken to him afterwards had tried to explain: We are saving ourselves.

*That's what you're doing in the Divide, isn't it?'

*ANGEL.'

It could take a while for the creature to build up the verbal momentum to complete a sentence. Skender turned instead to Sal and Shilly, who had left the guards standing at a cautious distance and pressed forward to help him. Gwil Flintham was a dot in the distance, still running.

*I'm okay,' he told them. *I think this big lug was sent up here by Mawson. There's something coming down the Divide, out of the mountains. It's huge, and it's frightened the man'kin.'

*Frightened them?' echoed Shilly disbelievingly.

*ANGEL SAYS.'

*Remember that the man'kin don't see time the way we do. They see it all at once, in a big tangle, and it's hard for them to tease out individual threads. Before we left the Aad, Mawson told me that he and the other man'kin were afraid of the one from the Void, the Homunculus. That's what I thought he meant, but I was wrong. They know that when the twins come, something else, something terrible, is going to happen. And it's on its way right now.'

*ANGEL SAYS RUN.'

*What is it?' asked Shilly, glancing at the man'kin then back at Skender. *Can we stop it?'

*I think it's a flash flood - and a big one. We need to let the Magister know. If it comes this far and hits while the Wall is breached ...'

It wasn't a thought he wanted to complete aloud. He wasn't familiar with rivers that flowed the year round, but had seen sudden surges tear down a watercourse that had been dry for months, tossing boulders as though they were pebbles and ripping trees right out of the ground. The tiniest c.h.i.n.k in a bank or dam could be widened in an instant under the force of such a deluge. Nothing could withstand it.

In his mind, he pictured the city flooded as a wall of water burst through the hole made by the man'kin. He felt ill. Chu and his mother were down there, along with thousands of other people. He couldn't stand by and let them die.

*That's what we missed,' said Sal, looking annoyed at himself. *Down in the Divide, the man'kin told us they were running. I thought they were running to something, not from something. We have to help them.'

*How far away is it?' Shilly asked. *How much time do we have?'

*I don't know exactly, but it was moving fast. Minutes, not hours.'

*Would the Wall withstand it, even intact?'

*I suspect there's only one way to find out.'

*The man'kin sure picked a s.h.i.tty time to attack,' fumed the leader of the guards, who had come up behind them and overheard the conversation. *If it wasn't for them, we'd be perfectly safe.'

*And what about them?' Shilly snapped at him. *They're living things, too. I bet the Magister wouldn't have willingly given them refuge, not in a million years.'

*Well, they've killed all of us now, haven't they?'

Skender shook his head and held up one hand.

*Listen,' he said. *Can you hear it?'

Both Sal and Shilly looked along the Divide to the east, straining to hear what was coming.

*Wrong direction,' he said, pointing the other way. *Listen closely - and if you don't hear it, that's a good thing.'

*You're starting to sound a lot like Mawson yourself,' Shilly said in brittle tones. *Want to explain what you're talking about?'

*The fighting's stopped,' he said, pulling them closer to the twisted rail. *I'm starting to think that it never really started.'

Shilly felt hundreds of pairs of eyes turn to look at her as she peered over the edge of the Wall. The man'kin horde had overrun a large swathe of the city's slums, filling every niche and nook with their presence. They sat on roofs, windowsills and doorsteps, and straddled the meandering roads. None of them moved, except those at the very edge of the slum area, where city guards still objected to their presence. Their territory was no longer expanding, however. For the moment, they seemed content to simply occupy what they had taken.

All of them were looking up at her and the man'kin who had climbed high to deliver its message.

ANGEL SAYS RUN.

They weren't running now, and that could only mean one thing: it was too late to run any further.

*We have to close the Wall, and fast,' she said, feeling the certainty of it right down in her bones.

*There are still more coming through,' Skender objected, pointing.

*I don't care. If they don't shut it soon, everyone will die.' G.o.ddess, she thought, if the man'kin are scared, then we don't stand a chance! *We have to get word to the Magister.'

*And tell her what?' asked Skender.

*To stop Pirelius!' said Sal suddenly, squeezing her arm painfully tight.

*Why?'

*The Magister has sent him and the Homunculus to block the tunnel so the man'kin can't get into the city.'

Skender's eyes widened. *If the twins are in there, the man'kin won't be able to fix the breach. The stones won't move.'

*Exactly.' Sal thought for a second. *I'll call Kail and see what he can do. You two think of a way to stop the Homunculus in case he fails.'

*There's one easy way,' said the guard, hefting one of the globes.

*What's wrong with you?' Anger flared deep in Shilly's gut. *The Homunculus and the man'kin both deserve to live as much as you do. Try dropping anything else from up here and you'll follow, okay?'

*It might come to that,' said Skender. *Killing the twins, I mean, if we can't think of anything else.'

*Then we'd better make sure we do.' She put a hand over her eyes, wishing the sound of the alarum would let up just for a moment. The pieces of a plan rattled around in her head but weren't falling into place as fast as she would have liked. A lot depended on how much time they had left.

Sal was communing with Kail again and his absence unbalanced her. She wanted to talk to him, ask him if her ideas might work. But she didn't dare break his concentration until she had something definite to give him.

Vacillation wasn't an option.

She took her hand away from her face. *Right. We talk to Mawson and the other man'kin through our friend, here.' The giant man'kin towered over them, as immobile as a rock but watching them closely through deep-set eyes. *We need to tell them that the flood is on its way. They have to start closing the tunnel, if they aren't already.'

*I think we'd feel it if they were,' Skender said.

*True. So they aren't. You pa.s.s on the message while I think.'

Skender turned away to talk to the man'kin. Shilly put her hands on the guard rail and leaned out over the Divide side of the Wall. The scene below was one of chaos and broken earth. Man'kin still pressed against the opening to the tunnel, although the mad crush had faded. A dense pall of dust hung over them. She could see Pirelius coughing as he manhandled his prisoner towards the entrance to the city Wall. His pace was slow but steady. He was only a couple of hundred metres away.

As she watched, the heavy lifter monitoring the scene tilted upwards and gained alt.i.tude in a hasty spiral. The Magister and her crew were checking the news themselves, she a.s.sumed.

There had to be a way ...

*Tell me something,' she said to the guard she had snapped at earlier. He was still holding a globe in his hand, and was probably just as willing to lob it down on the Homunculus as he had been before. *How are the charms on the Wall maintained?'

The guard looked over the edge. The giant signs were extremely foreshortened from their point of view. *We send crews down once a month. Are you thinking of changing them, to resist the flood?'

She shook her head, although she had briefly considered it. She doubted anyone could repaint the charms in time, even with all the resources of the city behind them.

*You said you send them down, not up. So there must be ropes around here, somewhere.'

He nodded, pointing at a hut near the far side of the Wall.

*Get them for me. We're going to need them, and soon.'

*But -'

*Quickly!'

Shilly thought for a second that the guard might actually salute as he turned on his heel and hurried away, calling for his fellows to help him. Any amus.e.m.e.nt she felt was almost instantly crushed by the knowledge of what she had to do next.