Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

He found a table, crouched there at the room’s centre. Warily, he eyed the walls, the artefacts, the weapons, the shields. It looked fake, like it would scorch and burn through any second, like the whole thing would dissolve into smoking, charred holes.

“Well!” Karine was behind the bar, arms folded beneath her breasts and a look of mock disapproval on her face. “And what time do you call this?”

“Dinner time,” Ecko told her, reflexively. He managed a grin.

She tutted. “Get your feet off the table.”

The others were coming further into the building, looking around them as though they, too, could not believe they were here.

“We’re back,” Triqueta said. “We’re really back. We’ve walked the halls of the Rhez itself, but we’re here. For love of every God , someone get me an ale.”

“Make that two.” Chuckling, Redlock unslung his pack, dropped it, looked for a chair. He carefully felt the ruin of his nose. Then, with a deep, determined breath, he crunched it back into place, swore. Blinked water from his eyes.

Behind them, Amethea had fallen onto the bench under the window. She sat with her head in her hands, unmoving.

The very last of the sun blazed silver from her hair.

“Ecko, Triqueta,” Roderick said. “I cannot express how much your return means to me – to all of us.” Karine snorted, grinned. “I understand you have many tales and I am... more than eager to listen – but I fear you are weary beyond endurance. I will aim to be patient.” He glanced up as Kale emerged from the kitchen with a steaming leather jug and a handful of mugs. When the Bard turned back, his expression was all mischief. “If I can. There is so much I must tell you also. The world has changed around us. Radically so.”

“Changed?” The word was thrown like a stone. Amethea looked at him, her pale face in shadow, her navy eyes dark as the sky. “The Monument is fallen. The Powerflux is awake. Maugrim may be dead, but...” As Kale silently poured her a mug of herbal, she wrapped her hands around it as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “We’ve won a fight – but that’s all. This is only the beginning.”

“We’ve won more than you know,” Roderick said. “If Roviarath still stands, then, I think, at least half of the plan has failed.”

Amethea said, aghast, “Half?”

His smile was oddly ironic, “As you say, this is only the beginni–”

Without warning, the night was shattered by a distant bellow of thunder.

The taproom gaped and then scrabbled, going for weapons and windows, calling for answers. The noise was loud, the sudden roar of something gunned to pain and fury. It was abrupt, and harsh, and close. It dropped a note, another.

The mica in the windows shook.

“It’s the Sical,” Amethea said softly. Her herbal tankard slid through her fingers to bounce from the floor, liquid splashing a great, dark stain in the sawdust. Her face haunted, she’d turned to the window behind her. “We can’t let this happen, we can’t!”

Roderick mouthed, Sical , confused.

Triqueta had sprung to the bench by Amethea, in her hand a short, terhnwood blade she’d swiped from the wall. Her face was sharp, eager. Redlock rose to his feet with his brown eyes blazing. He drew his axes, then dissolved into coughing, blood staining the back of his hand.

But Ecko was grinning. “For chrissakes, that’s not the fucking Sical.”

Suddenly, the tavern was real, solid – snapped into focus by the incoming sound. Ecko was at the door, his heart pounding, pounding. There was a certain inevitable symmetry to this – the feeling, again, of the pattern repeating itself. This was right , somehow, it was the final realisation.

Faster than a thought, he grabbed the handles and threw both doors fully open.

“ Sical, my ass!” he said.

The noise grew worse. In the rippling moonlight, on a dead straight heading, was a single, glaring, white eye – screaming towards them out of smoke-scented dark grass.

“What the rhez...?” Redlock stared like an idiot, then hands tightened round his axe shafts. “This time, you bastard. This time you’re not coming back.”

“Fuck me.” Ecko was almost laughing. “The ratfuck son of a bitch’s got a Thundergod!”

“You know that creature?” Redlock watched it closely.

“You’d better fucking believe it.” Ecko grinned at the oncoming cyclopean beast, the red lights in his eyes flashing. “Jesus Harry Christ,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t bad guys ever die when you kill ’em?” He moved to stand in the doorway, arms folded, his cloak hem billowing in the dawn breeze.

Sera came to stand beside him, his expression cold and calm.

Redlock, sniffing like a cokehead, was on his other shoulder.

Before them, the bike was closing at impossible speed, the sound ringing from the stones. Maugrim’s eager stance was challenging the tavern wall to a game of chicken.

Roderick had joined them, Triqueta. Karine’s hand closed around her cosh. Kale had retreated to the kitchen, his worn face tense. None of them moved.

As it screamed past the last fallen sarsen and into the garden, the bike turned sideways, fell and skidded to a halt, throwing out a wall of dirt and soil. The awful noise cut out, and Maugrim’s voice, shouting something, rang in Ecko’s ears. The greaser scrambled to his feet, didn’t bother to pick the bike up. It lay there like a corpse, rear wheel idly turning, tyre packed with the dirt of the Varchinde.

Maugrim stepped over it, grinning. His t-shirt and cut-down were soaked in blood and oil and sweat, there was a livid bruise around his throat.

“Hello there, Rick,” he said. “Good to see you.” He spread his hands, weaponless, surrendering. “It’s a fair cop, guv. You got me. I’m handing myself in.”

* * *

“So,” Ecko said, his voice a chainsaw rasp. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

They’d sat the smirking Maugrim at the table’s end, the rocklight glimmering on his dirt-stained skin. The faint scent of smoke lingered in the air.

Redlock watched him closely, as if the axeman was itching to finish what he’d started.

“The Ecko.” Maugrim was carefully casual, leaning back, half his face in shadow, his hair a halo of unholy illumination. “The one and only. Bit lost aren’t you? Last anyone heard, the Ecko had sold out and joined Lugan’s strike team – pitting themselves in a doomed war against the might of Pilgrim Products Inc. Guess you weren’t as tough as you thought.”

“You know Lugan?” Ecko said. “Oh chrissakes, who the hell’m I kidding? You’re my end-of-level nasty – of course you fucking know Lugan.”

“Everyone knows Lugan.” Maugrim grinned. “Where d’you think I got the bike?”

Round them, Karine was bustling, herbal and plates of food. Sera watched the door.

“Shame you didn’t bring him with you – he probably is as hard as he thinks he is.” He picked up the herbal, eyed it warily. “You, Ecko, you messed up. You died. ”

Died?

Landed on the tarmac like a lump of...

“Yeah, right.” Ecko was tense, adrenals flickering. He was aware of Amethea’s bruised stare, Redlock’s pacing agitation. “I didn’t fucking die.” The ’bot, the screaming London weather, falling. “Eliza put me here to Save the World.”

Even as he said it, it sounded ridiculous.

“Eliza!” The name was a guffaw. “They’d waste that sort of expense on you? I’m in the profession, you might say. And I know your profile, Gabriel – you’re a screw-up, a screaming pyrophile, a madman. Untreatable.” He was still laughing. “And now a megalomaniac. Save the World, my left nut.”