Part 9 (1/2)

'Oh, f.u.c.king great,' Leki said.

Bon held the flaming torch out towards the room's doorway and the wide hall beyond. The heavy tree roots that had grown through from above were hung shadows waiting to whip. The shaded lines of protruding blocks flickered back and forth as the flame moved in a slight breeze. Old dead Skythe breathing, he thought, and the idea of the land having a breath chilled him to the core.

'Come on,' Leki said. 'Don't show fear.'

'What? That could be anything out there!'

'Don't think so,' she said. She grabbed his hand and, though her palm was slick with sweat, tugged him gently forward, holding the torch before her.

A shape moved sideways into the archway. Bon thought it was an ape of some kind, like the rawpanzies of the Blane Jungles far to the south of New Kotrugam. Sometimes people kept them as pets, and occasionally they were trained as clowns or servants. But this ape was different. Its body was hairless apart from a thatch between its legs and the long, straggly hair reaching its shoulders from its half-bald head. Its features were human, disturbingly so. And Bon could not help thinking that its keening, clicking voice held something that might have been language.

It was staring at Leki, and the growl came again.

'Where are you?' The call came in from the distance, above the cellars in the open ground. Juda.

'Don't shout,' Bon said. 'Don't startle it. I know what this is.'

'I thought I did too, but ...' Leki said.

'Skythian,' Bon said. 'This is what they've become.'

'No,' Leki said, an exhalation of shock and sadness rather than denial.

'Keep your hands fisted,' Bon said. The Skythian was staring at Leki. 'Try not to blink. I don't think it knows quite what you are.'

Bon edged slowly towards the Skythian, fascinated and shocked. Such human traits in something that looked almost animal. It swayed slightly where it stood, glancing back and forth between him and Leki, and he knew not to underestimate it. People he'd spoken to had different ideas of what had become of the denuded Skythian race, and in reality there was no way to say what might happen here. Some stories told of primitive herbivores who haunted their ruined centres of population like the shadows of their dead, brilliant ancestors. Others told of savages, and cannibals. To get out of this alive, Bon had to a.s.sume the worst.

Juda called again, more urgently. The Skythian glanced back and up towards the stairs leading to the surface. And in that glance Bon saw the first hint of intelligence.

Of scheming.

'Leki, get ready to run for the steps,' he muttered, as more shapes appeared out of the dark room behind the first. Four, then six. Most of these were naked as well, but a couple wore rough garments around their loins, and they all carried basic weapons a rocks, spears, blades.

The first Skythian said something in its rattling, deep voice, and though Bon had studied Old Skythian in its written forms, he could not identify any of this language. Their tongue had changed as much as their appearance. He could smell the stink of them, animal and unwashed. They stalked rather than stood, eyes glittering with basic hunger, primeval fear. Civilisation was no longer here, and Bon felt a surge of sadness for these people and their ancestors. Who might you have been? he thought, looking at the first shape. If things had been different, what might you have done? The man growled at Bon, baring his teeth, crouching down as if unsettled by the scrutiny.

'Bon! Leki! We have to move, now!' Juda sounded more urgent than ever, an edge of panic to his voice that ignited panic in Bon.

'Bon ...?'

'When I say run-' Bon began, and then the first Skythian sprang at Leki. She let out a cry and Bon stepped sideways, knocking the leaping shape to one side. The impact was hard, the weight of the skinny thing surprising, and as it sprawled to the ground in a riot of waving limbs its companions started screeching and yelling, high-pitched ululations that hurt Bon's ears.

Shaken, he went to pick up the torch he'd dropped, but the fallen Skythian was quicker. It dragged the torch across the gritty floor and lifted it, waving it back and forth to excite the shadows. The others screeched even more, edging forward, back again, constantly on the verge of leaping into the fray.

Bon knew that if they all came at once, he and Leki would fall beneath them. They might well be a sad echo of what they once were, but they also intended to do him and Leki harm.

Leki stepped forward and waved her knife, slas.h.i.+ng at the air in the hope that it would warn them back.

'Bon? Bon Ugane?' Juda's voice was closer, but none of the Skythians seemed to notice. Why use my second name? Bon thought.

Another shape came forward a a woman, thin and wasted a and hacked at the air with her clawed hands, mimicking Leki's movement.

'To the steps!' Bon said. 'You go first, backwards, keep the knife ready.'

'Here!' She threw him her torch and started backing along the hallway to the steps. Bon caught the flaming stick and heaved it back and forth, the flame roaring quietly as it burned the darkness. The Skythians backed away, but there was no fear in their eyes. Bon wasn't certain what he saw there. Not intelligence. But ... a curiosity, and perhaps a desperation to know who and what he and Leki were.

The woman waved her hands again, then reached into her wild hair and withdrew two writhing shapes. She flung them at Bon, and he was so surprised that he backed away and lost his footing, slumping against the hallway's rough wall and feeling age-old plasterwork crumbling beneath his back.

'Snakes!' Juda shouted, and from the corner of his eye Bon saw their guide halfway down the steps.

Bon thrust the torch out and one of the slinky shadows hissed to an end in the flame. Another struck his leg and he kicked it away, waiting for the bite, expecting the cool flush of pain as venom melted his veins and a.s.saulted his organs. But no pain came, and as he found his feet the woman was already reaching into her hair for more.

Something coughed and hissed, and the woman's left forearm shattered in a cloud of blood and fractured bone. She slumped to the floor without a sound. A slick of blood spread quickly across the intricate mosaic floor, painting its new, terrible story across that old one.

Juda was already reloading a new cylinder into his pistol, but Bon knew that their chance was now. The screeching had silenced into shock, and Leki was staring at him, wide-eyed, freckles of blood on her face black in the torchlight.

Bon grabbed her hand and ran, kicking aside the torch wielded by a Skythian man. Juda waved them on and, as they reached the uneven steps and climbed towards daylight, Bon did not feel any sense of escape. He had seen Juda's expression.

'They're here?' he asked.

'Not quite,' Juda said. He stared at Bon strangely, as if seeing him for the first time. He had a smudge on his forehead that might have been blood. 'I saw them on the ridge, and they'll be coming quickly now that they can smell us. They might even see us. So we have to run, not look behind, and you have to trust me completely.'

'We have up to now,' Leki said coldly, but Juda seemed hardly aware of her presence. His eyes glimmered as he stared at Bon, burning with a fire Bon did not know.

'Completely!' Juda emphasised. 'Whatever I tell you to do, whenever, you have to do it if we're going to live. It's ten miles to the gas marshes, maybe more, and they're faster than us.'

'I don't know,' Bon said, and weariness was smothering him. Tired muscles and aching legs, and the weariness of the soul that had been his curse for years. Leki held his hand, squeezed. She doesn't seem even remotely scared, he thought, but he was too distracted to dwell on that right now. Beneath them, he heard the scurrying sounds of Skythians shaking off their shock and coming in pursuit. Above, the slayers had his scent in their nostrils, and would not stop until they could smell his spilled blood. Hopelessness hung heavy, misting the air like the Skythian woman's blood when Juda had killed her.

But then Juda said something that lifted that weight for ever.

'Venden Ugane,' he said.

'Venden?' Bon gasped.

'Living to the north. And we can find him, if we shake the slayers.'

'Venden is alive?' Unreality struck Bon, swirling him in its dizzying embrace. My son. My son!

'No time now.' Juda remained motionless for just a moment, wide eyes still on Bon as if he saw something more than human, and greater than everything he sought. Then he turned and ran, and Bon and Leki had no choice but to follow.

'Come on,' Leki said.

'But Venden?' I haven't told Juda his name.

Leki offered him a tentative, confused smile. Her eyes were alight. She wasn't really scared back there at all, Bon thought, and she still seemed rich with potential she had not exposed. A stranger, she had layers he had barely touched.

Blazing sunlight did nothing to lessen the sense of doom closing in, and could not match the fire of hope that had been ignited in Bon Ugane once more.