Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

Bez was surprised to realise that he feared it.

He shed the burden of the Shaumian girl with relief, slipping her from his back and letting her fall to the ground. She moaned and stirred. Her face was flushed, her hair matted with sweat. His immobilising scratch had made her feverish.

‘Be careful with her!’ Chazia snapped. She glared at him with distaste.

‘I found her,’ said Bez. ‘I brought her. I give her to you.’

It had been a hard run from the raion. The smell of the girl on his back, the feel of her belly warm against his shoulders, had nagged at him the whole way.

‘Is she all right?’ said Chazia, bending over her. ‘She is bleeding. You didn’t…?’

Bez noticed how Chazia’s fox-red hair was thinning. Patches of angel flesh were visibly growing across her skull.

‘A graze,’ he said. ‘She fell.’

As Chazia straightened up he tossed the stinking knotted ball of twigs and bones and stuff towards her.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘She was carrying this. Only this.’

Chazia caught it neatly and cupped it in her hands. She grinned–a vulpine stretch of thin lips–and laid the thing carefully on the bench.

Bez hated this woman. He’d served her too long. He had served for too long altogether. He was Bez .

‘You are leaving?’ he said, indicating the preparations around them.

‘The strength of the Vlast lies in the east,’ said Chazia. ‘We will build a new capital, better, stronger and more pure, at Kholvatogorsk. I intend that Kholvatogorsk will be a clean city. Mirgorod is too… tainted . Too near the margins. Old things not properly cleared away.’

She means me , thought Bez. The bitch. She refers to me.

‘I have not touched the woman yet,’ he said. ‘You will give her to me when you’ve finished.’

Chazia looked at him sharply.

‘I need her alive,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how long for.’

‘I am no lickspittle of the Vlast,’ said Bez. ‘Service is not its own reward. Service is no reward at all.’

‘Your assistance to me, as to my predecessors, has always been appreciated, Bez Nichevoi. If you’re leaving by the underground way you’d better go quickly. A train is coming.’

‘ A train? Here? ’

‘This tunnel connects to the Wieland station. The way was closed after the Pollandore was brought here. I’ve had the tracks repaired to take it out again.’

‘You’re taking that thing with you?’

‘Mirgorod will fall. I’m not going to leave it here for the Archipelago to find.’

When Bez Nichevoi left the Lodka it was still thick night, but the fierce edge of dawn was burning its way across the face of the Vlast. Already the burning light was less than five hundred miles east of Mirgorod, and the turning of the planet was bringing it closer. He could feel it. He needed to hurry. Get out of the light. He knew a place in the cellar-age of what had once been a brewery. It would be quiet there. Out of the way, if the bombers returned. Bez never slept in the same nest two days running.

Between him and refuge lay the Black Wisent Quarter. It wasn’t wise to pass through the Black Wisent on such a night as this. Old things were near the surface there. But he’d lost too much time already and a detour would cost him more. The sun was coming. He scrambled from roof to roof and ran across open spaces, angry and frustrated. The warmth and smell of the Shaumian woman was still in his clothes.

Chazia’s new Vlast in the east was no place for him. Perhaps he would stay in Mirgorod. War was coming and there would be good pickings in the city. Or maybe it was time to go back to the mountains. Some brick-turreted burgh in the Erdyeliu would suit him well. Glaciers and pinewoods. Lynx and chamois. Giants and trolls and rusalkas. His kind had lived off such as them long before the Vlast had come, and still would, long after the Vlast had crumbled and faded.

But he would go back for the Shaumian woman before he left. When night came again he would go back to the Lodka and fetch her and take her with him. Make her last a while. If Chazia didn’t like it, he would kill Chazia. That would be good.

Bez was well into the Black Wisent Quarter now. The snow had fallen more thickly here. It lay feet-thick in the squares and mounded in high drifts against walls. He skittered lightly across the surface, his feet scarcely leaving traces.

Something on the wind alarmed him.

Wolf was following. Coming fast.

Dawn was too near. It was better to avoid a fight.

Bez picked up speed. A bitter pre-dawn wind whipped his face. Hard pellets of snow stung his cheeks. Snow. Thick, sudden snow. Snow-thorns scraping at his eyes. Something was wrong. Snow. Too much snow. He ran faster, his sunken chest burning.

He should not have entered the Black Wisent Quarter.

The snow under his feet slipped suddenly sideways, like a rug pulled out from under him. Unbalanced, he fell. Hard. Onto icy cobbles.

Bez picked himself up. The snow was watching him. Waiting to see what he did. He was in an empty space between buildings. Snow-dogs circled in the shadows of the mouths of the streets and observed him from under the low branches of snow-heavy trees. He stood his ground, turning slowly, looking for a way out or a place to make a stand.

Wolf walked out to meet him. A man in a long coat and an astrakhan hat.

‘Where is the girl?’ said wolf. ‘Did you find the girl? Did you?’

‘ Fuck you, turd puppy! ’

‘Did you find her?’ said wolf. ‘What have you done?’

‘ Too late, teat licker. The bitch fox has her now. ’

Bez hissed and went for wolf, fast. At the last moment he jumped high to come down from above and take his eyes. A quick decisive kill.

But wolf was faster. Faster and stronger.

Wolf ducked sideways and reached up and gripped Bez by the ankle. Caught him out of the air and whiplashed his light body down. Smashed him against the ground, crashing the back of his head against the cobbles. Before Bez could recover wolf was on him and ripped his head clean away from his neck. Foul-smelling black watery ichor sprayed from the mess between his shoulders and dripped from the root of his skull.

Antoninu Florian began to walk, holding the head of Bez in one hand, out to the side, away from his body, like a dark lantern. The head shrieked and cursed and screamed and tried to bite the hand that held it by the hair, but its teeth tore nothing but its own lips and tongue. With his other hand Florian dragged the thrashing, spasming living corpse behind him by the leg. The corpse tried to kick itself free but could not. Arched its back and slashed at the air with needle fingers.

‘ Fucker! Fucker! ’ the head was screeching. ‘ You stinking bag of shit! I will lay your eyeballs on your shoulders so you can watch me eat your brain. ’

It was curious, Florian thought, how much noise the mouth could make when disconnected from its lungs. He wondered what the biology of that was.

Somebody pulled aside an upstairs curtain and looked out from a house as they were passing. A pale face pressed against a window. The face disappeared and the curtain fell back.

Florian dragged the body to a place he had prepared in the shell of a bombed-out building. A pyre of roof timbers and furniture waited there, supplemented by a kindling of mattresses and curtains and books. He flung the lightweight, disgusting head onto the pile and threw the body after it. Weighted the thrashing body down with heavy beams and doused the whole heap with kerosene from a jerrycan he’d stashed nearby. Lit a cloth-wrapped chair leg with a match and laid it carefully at the base.

The pyre went up in a sudden explosive flowering. Flags and sheets of flame billowed in their own twisting wind. Dry wood chattered and spat. One more bomb-fire in a city pitted with smouldering buildings.