John McNally - Giant Killer

Books.

Candle-light.

Words.

Thousands of pages, rotting and reused, torn and shredded, lining the floors and jamming the gaps to keep out the cold. Fuelling tiny fires.

A library. Finn knew it was from the smell, the musty, trusty smell of books. But he had never seen a library as tragic or as strange as this. A huge high ceiling topped ranks of splintered shelves lining damp walls that seemed to run from earth to heaven, an illusion reinforced by the religious decoration on the smoke-blackened pillars and frescos, saints’ faces, red and gold and ruined. An ornate, crumbling wedding cake of a library transformed into a slum, its desks and furniture upturned and adapted, knocked and nailed into an encampment of shanty shacks, out of which devilish and dead-eyed children stared and shivered, dressed in grey sackcloth and buried like hamsters under the piles of yellowing pages. A dormitory of the damned. And at the far end, on a raised dais with a commanding view over the whole cavernous room, was a large desk on pillared legs, where sat, surrounded by bells and dangling tubes, a striking young man.

Their deformed saviour headed straight for him, letting Carla down off his back to offer her like a cabbage to a king.

“ Draga … Primo? ” said the boy.

Primo? thought Finn. He could see his face in shadow – handsome, sherry-skinned, dark eyes with a thousand-yard stare. He had seen the dangling tubes around him before, in old war films, speaking tubes used to communicate on ships and submarines.

“ Ce facut? ” asked the Primo, suspicious.

“Santiago find,” the boy explained in English.

He lifted Carla higher and the Primo reached out a hand. His fingers sought and gently traced the detail of Carla’s face as Finn looked again at the Primo’s black eyes … and at the same moment, Carla came round, shocked at the touch of the sculpted youth staring straight through her. She drew breath to scream—

“No! He’s blind, Carla!” shouted Finn, running to her ear.

Carla caught the scream, and flinched from the hand, turning away, only to see the mashed-up face of Santiago for the first time.

“ARRRRRRRRGGGH!”

“It’s OK, Carla! The freaky kid rescued us!” Finn insisted in her hair.

“Stop!” demanded the Primo, quelling her at once.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re in the castle, I think they’re OK!” said Finn. He could feel her pulse thumping through her scalp.

“Romana? English? Deutsche? Française?” demanded the Primo.

“What’s happening?” Carla managed.

“Santiago found you. You should not be here,” said the Primo.

The deformed boy, Santiago, shuffled.

“What do you mean?” said Carla.

A bell rang on his desk. Then two bells. Distant orders began barking out of the speaking tubes.

“Hide her!”

Carla felt no fear – she felt warm for the first time in months.

They’d been hurried out of the library as the main doors opened to three brutal-looking adults in black, AK47s slung across their backs, “ Siguri ” the ragged children called them, as they were smuggled down to a cell-like storeroom, where Carla had been urged to hide in a wooden chest.

They’d heard a fair amount of crashing and yelling, then nothing for a long time.

“Finn,” Carla whispered.

“Shh!” Finn said, listening hard in her hair – then “AHH!” as he found his legs being tasted by a pair of snout-headed lice the size of fat cats, their organs visible beneath their maggoty skin. “GETAAWAYAYYYY!” Finn grabbed the spike that never left his side, but before he could swing, the lice were off through Carla’s hair, roadrunner legs whirring like outboards.

“Are you OK?” said Carla.

“Bookworms,” said Finn.

“Worms in my head?!” she hissed.

“No, not ‘worms’ – that’s just what they’re called. They’re bugs that feed off mould – and me—”

Finn stopped. He could hear something.

Footsteps.

“Someone’s coming!”

The lid of the chest lifted and candle-light revealed a scrap of a girl with a thick Slav accent. “Come! Be quick!”

Moments later, Carla was running behind the girl back along the stone passage to the library.

Some of the shacks had been kicked down, and bedding and pathetic belongings lay around in a tangled mess, but the Siguri had gone. Some of the younger children were gathered around the Primo’s dais, anxious. Carla was rushed straight up.

“Santiago has been taken by the Siguri guards. You must save him,” said the Primo, urgent. “They know he has been out now. They are searching for s stranger.”

“For me?” said Carla.

“Santiago found an injured climber last year – they killed him. So now they think, if he finds another, he’ll hide them.”

“What have we walked into?” Finn asked above Carla’s left ear.

“Why would they kill an injured climber?” asked Carla.

“Because it is the Will of the Master,” said the Primo.

“Oh great. Oh, just perfect,” said Finn, his heart sinking. “Ask him if they’re Tyros .”

“Are you Tyros?” said Carla.

“We are the Carriers. We serve,” said the Primo. “The Tyros are in their dormitories.”

“Dormitories?” said Finn.

The scrap of a girl threw a sackcloth robe over Carla’s head, and Finn had to duck in case he got dragged out.

“The Abbot has called for more fire,” said the Primo. “Go with Olga. Santiago must live. He is one of us. You are a stranger.”

“But a Tyro dragged me here from China! A monster! I only just escaped. I—”

“If Santiago is dying, you must give yourself up and save him,” ordered the Primo.

“Sacrifice myself?”

“If you do, you will become one of us,” explained the Primo solemnly. “We will try and save you too.”

“And if I refuse?” asked Carla.

“Then they will find your body at the foot of the cliff,” the Primo stated matter-of-factly.

Carla’s temper flared.

“You’re threatening to kill me?”

“I’m making you an offer – honour or death. I must protect the Carriers. If Santiago talks, he puts them all in danger,” the Primo stated.

The Carrier kids watched and waited. A curious bunch – all sizes, shapes, colours and ages, dressed in the same sackcloth as Carla.

“Keep him talking. Buy some time,” said Finn at her ear. “We need to weasel a way out of this.”

“I choose honour,” Carla answered.

“I said stall!” complained Finn.

“Santiago must live,” repeated the Primo. “Go!”

“Go!” answered Olga, and she pulled Carla in a skinny grip towards the exit.

Finn climbed through Carla’s hair, still complaining as they left the library and hurried up a main passageway that curved up through the building, its flagstone floor polished smooth by centuries of footsteps.

“We need to get out of here,” said Finn.

“And leave him to die?” said Carla.

Olga scurried through some doors ahead of them and suddenly they were in cavernous kitchens, dead at this hour, but with a great black iron furnace at its heart. Olga opened the furnace door to reveal a nest of large stones, white hot, like dragon’s eggs. She lined up a pair of iron buckets and with some huge tongs grabbed and dumped a glowing stone into each one – donk, donk . Then she handed Carla a thick glove and indicated towards a bucket.

“Go!” Olga urged and picked up her own shimmering load.

Carla followed suit and Olga led them out of the kitchen and into the black heart of the complex—