Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

The building I was on adjoined another taller building whose contents, by virtue of a stronger roof, were a mystery to me. I jumped, caught the next roof ridge, and hauled myself over it, losing all my buttons along with considerably more skin than I had to spare. The leading novice almost caught hold of my dangling foot. I had the satisfaction of hearing his fruitless charge smack him face first into the wall. A quick glance revealed the giant halfway along the first roof ridge, showing an unreasonable degree of balance for something so large and crudely made. One priest trailed in his wake, his left arm at a broken angle. I knew the man, one of Father’s more regular assistants, but his name eluded me-doing a better job of escape than I was managing.

Whilst running away is a great strategy, a good coward always takes the unfair advantage. I backed along the higher ridge, staying low, and swivelled around, drawing my dagger, already missing Edris’s sword. Two pale hands grasped the roof edges to either side of the capping tiles. I brought my dagger down on all four fingers on the right, gripping the hilt with both hands and applying my weight. A moment later the novice’s snarling face thrust into view over the ridge, his eyes empty of any holy intent and full of that unmanning hunger that drives the dead. I left off the attempt to trim his fingers and swung my doubled fist into his face. He dropped away and I took off running again.

Any man fool enough to run to the end of the second building’s roof is met by a yawning chasm and the possibility of leaping it to the broad, sloping roof of the royal stables. Forewarned, I sped up and left the roof with a mighty scream, legs still kicking, arms pinwheeling. I hit the stables’ roof with the sound of cracking tiles and possibly cracking bones, smacking my face and, by the feel of it, breaking my nose yet again. It took a moment before I regained enough of my wits to realize that I was rolling. I splayed my limbs starfish style and slid to a halt a few inches from the guttering.

Fifty yards back I could see the giant vaulting onto the roof ridge that I’d thrown myself from. The broken-armed priest had the lead now, the novice with the sliced fingers behind, both presumably lifted up in advance by the augmented corpse. I scrambled up the side of the stables’ roof, blood falling from my nose in a steady stream of fat drops.

Escape needs to be a pure and solitary goal. Images of Micha and her infant kept complicating the current chase, and as I gained the roof ridge it occurred to me that in times of trouble the DeVeer sisters would seek each other out. Had Lisa joined Micha in the Roma Hall? Because if so then whatever butcher had put together the thing chasing me was undoubtedly beneath the same roof as both women. Slowly my “escape” route had been curving around on itself, back toward Roma Hall, and leading me to a series of increasingly death-defying jumps that the dead seemed to be defying better than I was.

I lay panting for a moment, exhausted. The priest crashed into the roof a few yards below my position, thrown bodily by the giant. Somehow he clung on with one hand and looked up at me, moonlit. He snarled, with a depressing amount of energy for an elderly cleric who I recalled as walking with the aid of a thick stick or thin choirboy. Up close his name came to me at last. Father Daniel.

The novice crashed home beside him, failed to keep a grip with his bloody hand, and fell away to the distant ground. My cue to run again.

Ten yards shy of the end of the stables’ roof I veered left, racing down the incline at an angle. Five yards from the lowest corner of the roof I put on the brakes, going into a prolonged skid. By the time I reached the corner I’d slowed from breakneck to breakleg and dropped off with a wail that was half-prayer and all hope.

The trick to hitting the ground is to roll. Well, mainly it’s not to break. But rolling helps. My legs crumpled beneath me, resisting my momentum as manfully as they could and pitching me forward, already rolling as I fell. I smacked into the flagstones far harder than anyone should and went arse over elbow, coming to a halt in a groaning heap several yards on.

Father Daniel landed a short distance back from me, shattering both ankles. He continued to crawl after me, sparking memories of several old nightmares, but now reduced to an even slower pace than he managed in life.

I staggered up and limped away. The thud behind me as the giant landed nearly stopped my heart. With a groan I increased the tempo of my limp, cursing my right knee, which seemed to have become filled with broken glass. By the time I reached the side of the Poor Palace, gasping out cries for help, I still hadn’t seen a single person other than Ronolo who wasn’t dead and trying to kill me.

I followed my childhood route to the roof of the Poor Palace, windowsill to window arch, two gargoyle heads-mouths gaping and ready to vomit foul water from the privies within-another sill another arch and the tricky matter of clambering over the lip of the roof from an underhang. That had been a lot easier when I weighed a quarter of what I do now and had yet to realize that I wouldn’t just bounce if I fell.

How the giant was following me I didn’t understand. It sounded rather as if it were tearing handholds out of the sandstone walls. I gained the dark slate slope of the roof with the dead thing reaching for my heels.

Running up a forty-five degree slope feels like climbing a cliff at the best of times. After the chase I’d been through the best I could manage was a steady crawl. Behind me it sounded as if the monster was breaking through the eaves of the roof rather than attempting to circumnavigate them. I found a loose slate and turned to hurl it at the dead man’s head. It sliced past his ear and arced out into the night.

I reached the base of the west spire as the giant pulled itself onto the roof, its skinned face glistening in the light of the rising moon. My brain had no advice to offer but “up” and I followed it. There’s a point where exhaustion settles in so deep that it leaves no room for new ideas. I climbed by instinct, hands finding the familiar holds that had led me up and down these spires for a decade and more. It’s an easy climb and one that offered little hope of defeating my pursuer, but I’d run out of places to go. I grabbed the first of the gargoyles and drew myself up. Technically they’re grotesques, given that they don’t spout water, but large ugly stone monsters will always be gargoyles to me, also I’m not one to care about the niceties of architecture when being hunted down by a skinless horror. Or when I’m not.

I climbed and the monster climbed beneath me.

In truth, though I had climbed down this particular tower I had never ascended it. I relied on the fact that it was twin to the east spire that stood on the other side of the grand portico, which I had scaled many times when visiting Great-uncle Garyus. The window directly above me was in fact, of all the palace’s many windows, the last one I would choose to clamber through. Only the certain knowledge that the Silent Sister was in Slov, combined with the presence of a huge and gory corpse following me up the wall gave me the impetus to keep going.

I got one hand on the windowsill, one foot on the back of the last gargoyle’s head, one moment when I thought I might make it, then the monster’s fingers closed on the heel of the boot on my dangling leg.

“Oh, come on !” It seemed so unfair.

I braced my leg against the gargoyle and heaved with all my might to break free. I hadn’t a chance but I’d try anything in desperation.

The gargoyle gave way with a shockingly loud crack. The dead giant hung on for a split second even as the man-sized statue hit him square in the face. In the next heartbeat both were falling. A second gargoyle interrupted the drop to the roof of the main entrance far below. The dead thing became momentarily impaled on stone horns before the weight of the first statue tore it free and both punched a hole through the flat roof of the portico and, slamming down to the entrance steps, created a stonedead flesh-stone sandwich.