Mark Newton - The Broken Isles

Once he had regained his breath, he wriggled through the gap and into the corridor connecting the gaol cells. He looked around for any signs that he had been spotted, but guessed he had got away with it.

Rika was in the corner. She appeared gaunt, skinnier than ever, but her expression was one of deep anger and resentment.

‘Evening,’ he announced, but she showed no signs of having heard him. ‘I’m guessing you’re probably quite hungry, right?’

Again, nothing.

‘Well, I’ve got a surprise for you.’ Randur pulled the key from his pocket. First he walked to the main door that connected with the rest of the Citadel and checked it would open easily; then he returned and put the key in the lock. Hungrily, Rika glanced to his hand and then back at him. He reached down into his boot, drew out a dagger, and placed it outside the cell, then sprinted to the window, jumped back up onto the frame, tied the rope securely around his waist. He heard the key click in the lock and the gaol door creak open. He slid his head then the rest of his body up and out of the window. He tugged down three times on the rope and shouted that he was coming up. He began to feel the rope tighten then yank him back outside into the darkness.

Back on the roof, back safely with Eir, she demanded he tell her what he had been up to.

‘I went to see Rika,’ Randur muttered.

Eir contemplated his statement and replied, ‘You freed her, didn’t you?’ There were conflicted emotions in her gaze, and he placed his hand over hers. ‘She hasn’t eaten in days, but she’s capable of causing a lot of damage. It took a superhero to catch her, that other night, you know.’

‘I can’t believe you did that without consulting me.’

‘It was the right thing to do, Eir. They would have killed her if they had seen her in the cell like that. They’d have shown no mercy because of who she was. If we’d brought her up here, she would have eaten us all.’

Eir remained silent, but the fact that she did not withdraw her hand indicated that she could well have supported his decision.

Screams filtered up through the night. They were occasional, at first — could have been anything. But the next time Randur woke up, the wails of agony from below were terrifying, far more so than anything the gangs had imposed upon the group. Men seemed to be suffering from horrific ordeals. They were sobbing and screeching like bats.

There must have been very few places to run in the winding corridors of the Citadel, very few ways in which to escape. However, if you were familiar with the layout, as Rika was, then there would be infinite places to take refuge.

Perhaps it was a very cruel thing for him to have done, unleash some mad cannibal in such confines. Perhaps. .

Only when the screams finally diminished could he fall asleep once again.

The crowds began to surge again, down below. The first rays of the morning sun began to show themselves, peeling back the darkness of the night. It had been a quiet evening. If indeed there had been breaches of the higher levels of the Citadel, Randur wasn’t aware of it. For all he knew, the gangs might have decided that there was no one around any more; that they had vanished down some secret tunnel. There was nothing to reveal that they were on the roof.

They ate meagre rations and waited. Noises filtered up from below: the Citadel was being ransacked. All that the commander had worked for was probably being ripped up or, judging by the burning smells, being set alight.

‘Do you think we should perhaps negotiate with them, lay down our weapons?’ one of the guards said.

‘Oh that’s right,’ Randur replied, ‘hand them our arses on a plate. Do you really think they’ll offer any kind of mercy? These are gangs — another word for c-’

‘Randur!’ Eir interrupted. ‘There’s no need for that. The man was simply asking a logical question.’

‘Logical?’ Randur spluttered, and glared at the soldier. ‘You can hand yourself in if you want. They might use your head as a vase if you’re lucky.’

‘I meant no offence, sir,’ the soldier replied wearily. ‘My apologies. I will, of course, fight as long as you instruct me to.’

‘Good.’ Randur strode to the edge of the building to look over the cityscape, feeling the chill wind on his face. He half hoped someone would see him and report that there were people on the roof. He wanted people to come at him now. He was sick of waiting — that was all he had done since he’d been in the city. He was a country lad, a scrapper. What’s more, he hadn’t had a good fight in ages.

He glanced back to the others, whose attention was now drawn to the opposite side of the roof — there, in the face of the onshore wind, someone was trying to climb up. Randur ran to address the situation, but arrived as the soldiers knocked the individual back down to the balcony a couple of floors below. The thug, a thickset man with a beard, fell flat on his back and lay motionless, staring up at them. Below the balcony, the streets were thronging with people.

‘Well, now they know we’re here,’ Randur muttered.

It wasn’t long before people were trying to get through the hatch and over the side of the wall. Not many attempted the latter route — it was too dangerous. The hatch repeatedly clattered until the sun was much higher in the sky, which led Randur to believe that people were taking it in turns to batter it.

Everyone looked to Randur and Eir for guidance now, but when an axe pummelled upwards into the wood, the soldiers stepped back and withdrew their weapons. Eir did the same. Randur took a few paces away to get a better perspective on the scene, before drawing his own blade and channelling in to his old sword techniques.

It felt as if he had met with an old friend again — that familiarity with the tension, the adrenalin, channelling his rage.

The hatch split.

One of the soldiers thrust his blade in the gap, stabbing someone down below. A cry came up, followed by a clatter as whoever it was fell backwards. Then a silence lingered. Randur could feel his pulse thicken in his throat.

Three soldiers stood around the hatch, waiting, swords in hand.

An arrow flew up and through the gap, narrowly missing one of the men. A moment later, more debris was tossed up, then someone tried to lunge out — he got a sword to his neck and fell bleeding down below, but by that point another man had squirmed up, waving a mace around his head as he did so, gashing one of the soldiers in the leg before another came to him with his blade. In the mayhem, more gang members piled out of the hatch, three now, each of different stature, and they shambled around the rooftop, weapons extended, but with a tired look in their eyes.

Randur smiled, knowing that they would not have had the benefit of a decent night’s sleep, as suggested by their lazy sword-handling and slowness of step. The soldiers quickly dispatched the invaders before yet more thugs came up in their place. Soon most of the soldiers were engaged in the business of sword-fighting as one, darkly handsome individual clambered up and sauntered around away from the main fight.

He was an onlooker, here, waiting for the mess to be over.

Randur noticed that three of the soldiers now lay dead or bleeding to death on the rooftop. People were dropping like flies — this was messy, useless combat.

The man with the handsome face and three-day-old stubble strode around the edge of the fighting and nodded at both Randur and Eir, before drawing his sword.

‘What’s your name, kid?’ the man asked, above the groaning of the wind.

‘Randur Estevu,’ he replied.

‘Bit of a crap name, that.’

‘Can you do any better?’

‘Malum,’ the man declared.