Heaven's Gate (29 page)

“Surely Baron Whistler would not allow such abuse of Union citizens.” Lillian protests.

“Why deny the people one of their few entertainments?” Blake asks echoing
Aden
’s bitterness, “distasteful as we might find it there is no choice,” he pats the empty water skin on his horse’s saddle, “think what you like about the water sellers and their masters they are the only chance of good, clean water in a hundred miles.”

“I’d almost rather try to go to the pool itself.”

“It would almost certainly ease your thirst, no one needs to drink with a slit throat.”

“I know the city and her customs as well as you do, Sam, I don’t need lecturing about their obsession with the water.”

“Out here who could blame them?” Lillian asks, wiping the thick mixture of sweat and dust from her forehead.

“Anyone who’s gone
unbaptised
because they can’t afford the water.” Blake answers grimly.

The sound of the mob, working itself into a frenzy, increases as they near the centre of the town. Ahead of the trio the main road opens up into a large town square, as both Aden and Blake know the square is always full of
clamour
but today it is not the cries of merchants or the hum of customers that fill the air, it is the yammering of a mob and the sobbing of the child on which the gathering human storm was preparing to unleash their fury.

“Only a boy! What could he have done?” Lillian speculates.

“The sins of fathers are often visited on their sons.”

“Especially in this case,”
Aden
comments, pointing out the two unnatural growths sprouting amid the cuts and dirt on the boy’s forehead, “no water seller will knowingly sell to a mutant.”

It is only when
Aden
says this that Lillian notices
 
Aden
’s own hat is drawn down as low as possible, without breaking the desert’s convention about not hiding ones eyes and his seven fingered hand has disappeared into the sleeve of his coat.

“The child was probably caught trying to reach the water, the locals consider the pool a blessing from the Lord, something not to be touched by the unholy or unclean.”

“They wouldn’t kill a child just for trying to drink,” Lillian says, without much confidence, “surely?”

“They will kill him;” Blake says, “they have probably been trying to kill him slowly for weeks by refusing him water. Without a guardian, a deviant child has little hope of surviving, perhaps he even chose to go to the lake to end it quickly.”

“They were just a little bit too Christian to offer him a quick death in the first place?”

“I do not ask you to respect what they are doing,
Aden
, it is wrong on any terms but I ask you not to bait me by attacking my faith.”

“Why would I need to attack your religion?”
Aden
asks harshly, “it reveals itself in the whooping of this crowd and their punishment of a child whose only crime was being born in the first place.”

So saying the mutant slides from the horse and stalks off into the throng, leaving Sam and Lillian to push their way through the crowd to one of the water sellers, who, as usual, were doing sterling business with so many people thrust so close together under the late afternoon sun.

“Let him go,” Blake advises, “it will be easier to buy water without the risk of him being noticed. He will come back soon enough and if not I’m sure he will be easy to find, he won’t go far without money or a horse.”

“But what if he does something stupid? You know that this has to affect him, he was really upset.”

“There will be no stopping him if he really intends to do something foolish and any attempt to do so might only goad him further. He has not survived this long by letting his emotions govern him, I think we can rely on him to see sense now, if not, then the sooner we can get water the better, before there is any trouble.”

“Sense? I think it’s you that is acting strangely not him, how can you watch this without even flinching?”

“I have watched this many times, I have seem children die and many, who now seem little more than children to me, have fallen to my own weapons, would it not be hypocritical to weep?”

“It might be human.” Lillian shoots back, her eyes still locked on the sobbing child being pelted with rotted fruit, small stones and even handfuls of mud scraped from the spots where the water sellers nearer the raised platform, on which the small wretch awaited his fate, had moved their huge pots, for fear of losing them to the tide of hysterical citizens. Ironic that it was no doubt such small puddles and patches of mud squeezed through rags that had sustained the boy this far into his short life.

While the Pilgrim conducted his hurried negotiations to refill the large water skins that hung from their horses’ saddles, Lillian scans the crowd for any sign of Aden but the tall mutant is quite capable of being circumspect, when he wants to and she sees nothing but the contortions of the crowd as it surges forward only to be beaten back by bailiffs, like some shapeless hungry beast. With Aden gone and Blake deeply involved in the haggling process Lillian turns her attention to the horses, they had only been able to recover two of them after the attack on the road past
Maulten
and unfortunately one of them was the nag they had purchased in
Marguild
. Neither beast was holding up well under the rigors of their journey. The stronger beast would have done better but necessity had forced them to ride double, Lillian only hoped that their hard pace had kept them ahead of their pursuers, there would be no charging out of town this time if something went wrong, the horses simply didn’t have the strength. With that thought in her mind, she returns her attention to the crowd, willing
Aden
not to do anything stupid; it is at that moment that she notices the flash of a white Inquisitor’s robe from under the darker fabrics swathing one of the men on the edge of the crowd.

The old rage is hot in
Aden
’s soul, so strong that the bile seems to be burning at the back of his throat. The noise is all too familiar, he only has to do is blink to see the crowd reaching for him trying to tear his flesh. Remembered pain leaves his hands shaking, apart from the size of the mob he might be back on the day of his own mutilation. Now though he was one of the crowd. Had even one voice spoken out against the hysteria and hatred could things have been different? Probably not, he’d lived long enough now to know that, but here he was watching another mad crowd at its grizzly work. No one voice could stop this atrocity but something else might if it were loud enough, his hand slips inside his coat and touches two tubes roughly the size of a candle.
Aden
had been only moments from trying to use them near
Maulten
even though in such quarters it would have meant certain death, his thumb flicks over the top of one of them priming the fuse. Over the years, since he had first come to Silverstop, the three storey inn that overlooked one side of the square had had little or no serious attention given to its brick work and the gouge left by a careless carter’s wheel in the corner of the building has only become worse with time. Aden makes for that spot, walking determinedly through the howling throng, a cheer lets him know that the rope has been put around the boy’s neck, without needing to look up, even if he is too late Aden is determined their victim will not die alone.

The last silver pieces have disappeared into the water seller’s pouch, when the man starts and hastily disappears into his tent. Sam deliberately finishes capping the water skin, ignoring Lillian’s warning of
 
“Inquisitors!”

 
“I said you would not show weakness twice,” a familiar voice mocks, “but I just had to see if you would be foolish enough to display your sympathy for mutants again.”

“I’m afraid I rate the peasants here more dangerous than your Inquisitors, then again I thought I killed you last time we met.” Blake answers.

“It is a good thing that you show caution but I must warn you not to underestimate me or my men, there are twenty guns trained on you now, my twenty best, so unless you think you can move faster than every one of those bullets I’d turn round slowly.”

“I assume there’s a reason you didn’t just shoot first, other than taking the opportunity to gloat, what is it?”

“I know how you value your life Pilgrim and you know how we value Lady Carter,” Nathaniel Tenichi’s voice is pitched so that only the Pilgrim can hear it over the screams of the nearby crowd, “there might be a way to preserve both.”

“And what would I have to do for my life?” Sam’s tone is equally quiet.

“No more than tell what I suspect is the truth. Despite his confessor’s best efforts General Leedon is in the city with us.”

“Good
 
to know we merit the attention of such a prominent man.”

“He is most concerned about his future bride,” Nathaniel says ignoring Lillian’s scowl, “Rugan would have him believe that her ladyship was abducted by the Strigoi, now while this might do wonders for our flagging recruitment it is a fiction I cannot allow to continue, for obvious reasons.”

“Because another campaign against the Strigoi could hardly fit into your master’s plans. What if I were to mention that to your General?”

“Do not think to embarrass me. These men know who they serve, and I don’t think you would survive more than a few moments after the kind of treachery that you are threatening. Do you think the General would set you free to continue your unnatural existence? Even if he spares you, you will not survive unless you gain the favour of someone who can provide you what you need. My lord, Kalip really has no wish to earn your enmity, Samuel, you have been manipulated into your current position for no good reason. We all seek the same thing, we want the Gates open whatever the necromancers may have told you, they will never allow you to reach your goal, it is one of the first principles of their order to prevent one of the undying from reaching the Gate.”

“I seek the Gate myself, I do not work with any Necromancers.”

“Perhaps not now, but you have until recently, we did not call you or tell you of the importance of Miss Carter, it had to have been them. There’s no point in denying it, what my scouts found on the road outside
Marguild
told me all that I needed to know.”

“The corpses attacked us, hardly a sign of cooperation.”

“Indeed that would seem to be the case on the surface but how did they know where to find you? Why did your horses stop on the road if not to talk? I know you were not in the eastern baronies when Lady Carter went missing, my master knows every
traveller
on the trains and your passage was marked. So who called you into this situation?”

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter for all I can trust your word.”

“You can trust it Samuel because although personally I would like to repay you for all the pain you brought me, my master has given his orders and I make a point of carrying those out. You could be a useful asset if you would transfer your loyalties to a more appropriate faction, you see you may not know who brought you into all this but I do.”

“How could you know that, when I don’t?”

“You will once I tell, you won’t you? And then you could prove your loyalty and usefulness by repeating what I tell you to the General, when you are brought before him.”

Blake pauses and stares at the immaculately dressed Pardoner. “There’s more to this isn’t there? You say you want my help against this Necromancer but if you want the Gate as much as I do, then you know that we must reach the ruins of Silversnow. Yorick has the book and he will not be there if we do not arrive.”

“My master is well aware of that and that is why he wants you to see reason, we can both have what we want. If you denounce Rugan for me, I will ensure that you survive and reach Silverstop one way or another. Think about it, Samuel you can get caught between the Necromancers and my master and have to fight them all the way or you can have our help and be almost certain of reaching the ruins. Why spend your time running and fighting off enemies, when with my help you could reach Silversnow with an army?”

“Kalip has never shared with anyone, Tenichi. I have spent many years running and fighting and a few more weeks hold no terror for me! And tell those boys to take their fingers off the triggers, we both know you can’t afford to shoot me, at least not until I’ve been to the ruins and recovered the book. As a rule I don’t like guns pointed at me if they aren’t going to be used.”

“Oh I think you’d survive a bullet or two, but in the spirit of trust, I’ll comply.” The Pardoner makes a gesture and the men around them move their hands off their weapons.

“What’s your answer, Samuel will you throw your lot in with us or keep serving the heretics from the desert?”

“I choose to do neither, and since you cannot afford to stop me at the moment, I don’t see any point in further conversation,” the Pilgrim responds coldly

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Samuel. You see recently Father Rugan has developed a frightening new ability, he claims that he has been granted insight during prayer but his obsession with you going north evaporated very suddenly and transformed into a conviction that you were headed west with Lady Carter. I know where you are going, so the fact that you are travelling west came as no revelation to me but the General has been following his ‘spiritual’ advisor’s council and that has brought us all here. Rugan has some way to find you and he has no compunction about ending your lives, indeed if he is what I think he is, he would count it as almost as great a success as finding the Gate itself. The General’s men are all over the city, Captain and they are looking for you, I’m your best chance you have of getting out of town alive.”