Саймон Морден - Down Station

Dalip ached. He was tired and hungry and dirty. His hair, normally washed and combed every morning, was a bound rope thick with oils. His boilersuit was becoming stiff with sweat and dirt. His kachera… he was ashamed of them. He should be clean. It was one of his sacred duties.

And this man, this gadfly, wouldn’t let him rest. Dalip wasn’t lazy. He worked hard, at everything, as was right and proper. A moment’s respite was all he wanted.

‘First strike?’

‘Then make sure it counts. None of your dabbing at me.’

Dalip assumed his stance, and so did Stanislav, and they began to circle each other. Now, the older man seemed tireless: relentless would be a better word. Driven. Determined never to lose. He was the same last thing at night as he was first thing in the morning, pushing himself, and pushing Dalip. He saw any slackening of the regime as intolerable weakness.

Dabbing indeed. He’d show him dabbing.

They feinted, lunged, dodged, retreated. Dalip remembered what Stanislav had said about getting tired, and making mistakes. He was already tired, so he ought to just close and attack, but the older man was still a stronger and faster and moreover, a filthier fighter. There was nothing pure about his style◦– whatever worked.

Then he was aware of being watched; a slight change in the air, a presence behind and above him that Stanislav in his singular focus hadn’t spotted.

In that moment, he was distracted, and his opponent struck, trying to tangle his feet and push him back against the wall. Dalip fell, but rolled out of the way before the stick poked his stomach, or his neck, or his groin, or his kidneys, or sideways into his ribs. So many ways that he was vulnerable, so many ways to be killed.

‘She’s here,’ he said, and Stanislav, thinking it might be a trick, ignored him and tried to rush him again. In his haste, he left himself open. Dalip dropped, thrust his arm up and delivered a palpable blow that would, had it not been a blunt piece of wood, gone up under the sternum and into the heart.

It was one of the few times he’d won: it left Stanislav winded, and him with sore fingers.

‘She’s here,’ he repeated, holding out his hand for Stanislav to grasp.

And she was.

Even by the candlelight, it looked as if she’d been beaten. Her face was battered, two black eyes, one she could barely see out of, a ragged purple cut on her pale forehead, her jaw swollen and seemingly misaligned. Her hair, normally straight and golden, was dishevelled and patchy, as if clumps of it had been cut or torn out. What could be seen of her shoulders and chest were mottled in colours from black to yellow.

She was staring down at the two men, just as they were staring up. Then she turned and left, slowly, painfully. The door up on the balcony opened, then closed again.

‘Soon,’ said Stanislav. ‘As soon as we can. We may not get a better chance.’

She dragged herself back to the castle. At times, it was literally that: when her legs were too tired, too painful to use, she’d pulled herself from one tree to the next. Her back◦– why did it have to be her back where she couldn’t see◦– felt strange. Numb one minute, burning the next. If she knew anything about dragons, which she didn’t because how could she, she guessed that whatever wounds she had were infected, and that she was going to die soon.

Which was, she considered, a fucking stupid way to go. Not that she wanted to go at all. She was eighteen and everything that life had so far thrown at her, and everything she’d thrown at life, had taught her that she was immortal. Stupid, irresponsible, impulsive, angry, alone: but immortal all the same. No matter what she did, no matter how much trouble she got herself into, nothing was actually going to kill her.

Not even the fire that drove her to Down. She’d watched other people die in flames, but it hadn’t claimed her.

And now she was going to get blood poisoning, like some skanky needle-marked junkie. Unless Crows showed up and helped her.

She’d shouted for him. Softly, because she didn’t want her voice to carry as far as a wolf ’s cry, but he never came.

Eventually, after stumbling and falling and crawling and rising, she recognised where she was, and spotted the unfinished crown of Crows’ tower through the forest. She hoped he’d be there. She was still hoping when she passed under the gateway that hadn’t been there when she’d left. She still hoped when she banged her little fist against the dark stained wood of the door, which also hadn’t been there before.

But the door opened slightly with her knocking, and she knew he wasn’t there.

It didn’t stop her from shouting for him.

‘Crows, you bastard. Why didn’t you tell me about the fucking dragon? Crows? Crows!’

He didn’t come, and she slumped against the door frame, immediately falling forward because she knocked the cuts on her back. The waves of pain left her on her hands and knees, gasping and nauseous.

She could feel fresh blood leaking down her sides, soaking into what remained of her boilersuit. She needed water. She wouldn’t feel so dizzy, so exhausted, if she drank more than the few scooped handfuls she’d managed from tiny, earthy-tasting rivulets. And she needed food, whatever she could find. Most of all she needed the pain to subside so that she could move again.

When she woke up, she was face down on the cold, hard stone and the shaft of sunlight through the open door had moved around. Her lips were dry, her mouth parched, her tongue stuck. She almost choked as she gasped, and her coughing was enough to make her whole body ache.

The rest, enforced and reluctant, had helped. She could now creep on all fours back out of the door◦– with difficulty as she seemed to blunder and sway into either the wall or the door as she tried to pass through◦– and across the pavement towards the spring.

It had, like the gate and the door, improved itself. From the trough that had contained the run of water before, it had become a circular pool. The water poured out of a stone spout at one side, and out again at the other, into a gutter that carried it through the now-impressive wall.

Even though she knew she shouldn’t, once she’d drunk her fill of cold, clear spring water so that it sat heavy and potent in her belly, she levered herself up and slid into the pool, pushing herself up and over the rim.

She held her face just over the surface of the water, while it soaked up her arms and legs. It wasn’t deep. It barely came to her elbows. But it was enough. She pressed her head down and turned it side to side, wetting her hair and scalp, watching the water tint pink in front of her wide-open eyes.

Then she rolled on to her back, spreading her arms wide and letting her body float. The water around her, constantly refreshed, gradually grew clearer as she lay there, her clothes once again becoming loose about her, rather than stuck to her skin. With her arms up, only the oval of her face◦– eyes, nose, mouth and chin◦– was above the rippling surface. She reached under for the boilersuit’s zip and dragged it down, easing her arms out one at a time, and pulled it down to her waist.

It wouldn’t come. It was stuck against something on her back. And yet when she tugged, it didn’t hurt. It just didn’t move.

The material was too tough for her to tear. She didn’t have a knife, though Crows might have left something in the castle. She couldn’t see her back anyway.

She gave up and tried to sit. Even that simple task seemed almost beyond her. She felt so weak, it took an age to manage upright. Something broke the water behind her, distinctly, long after she did.

She didn’t dare turn around. As the coldness of the water faded and the warmth of the late afternoon air touched her, she realised that there was something clinging to her back, hanging between her shoulder blades, heavy and wet. She sat very still, screwing her eyes up so that she wasn’t even tempted.