The Fallen (27 page)

Tacit turned the dead man's head to the side, Benigni's blind eyes staring away into the black corners of the corridor.

“Broken neck,” Tacit muttered darkly, his mouth turned up with grim admiration at the manner by which his death had been delivered. A swift blow. A strike from a professional. An Inquisitor. “He never would have felt a thing.” He set the flat of his palm against the forehead of the leader of the Sodalitium Pianum. “Still warm. Only just killed. Missed it by minutes.” Tacit looked up into the darkness beyond. “Which means his killer is still nearby. Never had a chance to hide the body.”

“Come on,” said Isabella, pulling at his arm to get him to rise, “let's get out of here. We need to go. Now.”

“Do you know if Benigni still lived at his old residence?” Tacit asked, stepping after her, but with his eyes fixed to the dead body behind them. His mind had begun to turn, homing in on this new and, he supposed,
important discovery. Isabella confirmed that he did, as they broke into a gentle run to reach Henry and Sandrine, following the pair of them to the open window.

In the moonlit doorway not far from where the body lay, a figure watched them leave, the hint of a smile touching his lips, as if remembering his old acquaintance.

Georgi mouthed the name “Poldek” and grinned.

FORTY EIGHT

P
LEVEN
. B
ULGARIA
.

Poré took his few belongings from the cupboard and threw them into his bag.

“Whatever are you doing?” asked the man with whom he shared at the room at the boarding house. Poré had taken three rooms for his men in the low terraced building in Pleven for the duration of their stay, the sign in the window promising clean and cheap lodgings, as they had proved to be. It had felt good to sleep in a bed rather than trying to find comfort under the stars with one's back to the hard earth, but now Poré knew that it was time to return to the road. And with urgency.

“We are leaving. This evening. Pack your things. And tell the others.”

“But what about tonight's meal? And you promised us beer!”

“Stay if you wish,” replied Poré, walking around the man to reach a drawer, out of which he pulled the last of his clothes, stuffing them roughly into his backpack, “but I am not staying in Pleven any longer.”

The man scowled. “What is the hurry?”

“Perhaps it is better that you remain ignorant. However, know this,” said Poré, pointing at him with a long finger, “we leave, in twenty minutes.”

“Not me,” the man answered back, crossing his arms about him. “Not until I have a full belly and a full night's sleep. And I'm sure you will find a similar answer from the rest of the men.”

“He will,” called a voice from the open door to the room.

Poré's eyes narrowed on the man standing there.

“Then I will go alone.” He threw the pack over his back and tightened the straps.

“What is the matter with you, Poré?” asked the man at the door. “When we first came away with you, you told us we were hunting Catholics, looking to make our fortunes through thieving and ambushing. A life on the road.”

“And we go back to the road. Going west, for Slovenia.”

“For what purpose?” the man demanded, stepping into the room. Others were at his back and followed him inside. “You bring us to Pleven, away in the east, to look for signs of old camps and cold fires, and now you are saying we next go to the Carso?”

“At least tell us why we should go with you?” another of the party asked.

The memory of noise and heat came to Poré, of a light so bright he had had to shield his eyes from it with his hands. He shook it from his mind and looked at the brigands beginning to surround him.

“If you are not coming with me, you will return the pelts I gave to you,” he said, his face puckered up in anger.

“How so?” growled the man with whom he had shared the room, as more of the men appeared at the doorway and pressed their way inside, attracted by the noise.

“They were the bargain I made when you came with me,” said Poré, aware that they had now surrounded him completely, a menacing gang. “Power, but only while you shared my path. If we part, you part with the pelts. That is what we agreed.” Poré's face had turned red at the mutiny unfurling around him.

“What if we do not wish to give them up?” one of the men asked, measuring himself up against the gaunt man.

“I do not wish to fight you,” replied Poré, his teeth gritted, his nostrils flared wide, “but I will if I have to.”

The men laughed. “How will you do that, old man? We number six and you're only one!”

“The pelts,” another hissed. “They are the least we deserve for what we have done for you.”

“Least you deserve?” spat Poré. “When I found you, you were snivelling drunks, barely able to piss straight! I have given you hope, belief.”

“You have given us power. Leave now if you must, but the pelts stay.”

His temper flared and Poré lunged towards the man but, as he did so, the window to the room burst inwards and two robed figures swung into the room.

“Inquisitors!” cried Poré, dropping to his haunches and rolling away, as the first of the gunfire erupted. Two of the men were hit, thrown back and lying still on the floor of the room.

The door to the room was still open and Poré made a dash for it, grabbing his bag and hobbling low as yet more gunfire raked the wall. He reached the exit and threw himself through it, staring back at the confusion of dust and tumbling bodies to see two of his men shudder into wolf forms and leap at the swelling numbers of Inquisitors. The rest of his men had been too slow, splayed over the floor, their dead eyes staring blindly across the room.

Bloodcurdling howls accompanied the sounds of armed combat as Poré hobbled as fast as he was able down the connecting corridor to the door at the far end. He threw it open and fell out into the side alleyway. The air was torn open with howling, explosions and cries. More sustained gunfire followed and then silence descended like a shroud, the last crackle of shooting dissipating in Poré's ears.

“Are any of them Poré?” he heard one of the Inquisitors shout, and his blood ran cold.

So they knew he was alive. They knew he was here.

They were here for him, this unit sent to kill him. He didn't know why he was surprised. For months now he supposed they would have been hunting him, the fact he had escaped from Paris and survived now known to the Holy See and Inquisition after the trail of carnage he had left for them across Europe.

“I think he crawled this way!” one of them called. “Out of the room.”

“The rat, he must have gone down here!”

Poré could hear footsteps in the corridor behind him. Urgently he looked both ways along the alleyway. There was a door opposite him and he tried it, relieved to find it unlocked. He vanished inside the moment the Inquisitors burst out into the alley behind him.

“You sure he came this way?” someone asked.

“Opposite,” an Inquisitor replied, and Poré sensed the man was pointing to the door through which he had just gone. “He must have gone inside.”

Beyond the door, Poré pulled the pelt from his bag and dragged it over his head.

“Come and get me,” he muttered, as rage flowed down from his scalp and into his limbs. Everything turned red and silver and an insatiable hunger grasped him.

The handle of the door turned and the wolf exploded from the other
side, decapitating the leading Inquisitor and removing the arm of the next in line.

“Shoot it!” one of them cried from behind a hail of silver bullets, as Poré leapt, clawing and slashing at everything that moved, snapping wildly with his vile, monstrous jaws.

FORTY NINE

I
TALY
. R
OME
.

Grand Inquisitor Düül heard the jostling of weapons in the passageway outside and stood in readiness as the Inquisitor bounded into the room.

“Tacit!” he said. The Inquisitor had sprinted all the way from Vatican City and was drenched in sweat, fighting hard to catch his breath.

“What about him?” replied Düül, his eyes narrowing, his pulse quickening.

“He's been spotted! In the Vatican. The inquisitional hall!”

“Take a unit!”

“A whole unit? Can we afford a whole unit?”

“This is Tacit we're talking about,” said Düül. “We know what he's capable of. Seal off the building. Make sure he doesn't escape. Find him and bring him back here alive.”

“Aren't you coming?”

Düül took his eighteen-inch scimitar from its sheath on his belt and ran his finger along its keen edge. “No,” he said, drawing blood from his thumb, “I'll wait and apply final judgement to the man as he kneels before me.”

FIFTY

T
HE
I
TALIAN
F
RONT
. T
HE
S
OČA
R
IVER
. N
ORTHWEST
S
LOVENIA
.

It had not taken long for Pablo and the rest of his unit to become entrapped within the battle again, as if the war were a vortex pulling them forever towards its centre. Three hundred yards across the plain, a renewed onslaught came from the shallow ridge at the end of it, bristling the rock all about them with small calibre rocket-fire.

“I have no ammo left!” cried Pablo to a soldier beside him, as they trundled into a run and charged towards the waiting enemy. The air felt hot and drenched with smoke, the ground beneath rising higher over broken rocks, which tested the legs and lungs and made chests burn. “I have no ammo left!” he cried again, knowing he was as helpless as a child as he charged towards the enemy trench.

At the top of the ridge was a scene straight from the fiery depths of hell. Every yard of the landscape was scarred with shell holes, splintered stone and the detritus of war, broken weapons, wagons, guns, shell fragments. The ground was covered in a crimson sheen turning black under the sun, spilled blood from the soldiers, both those attacking and defending. Body parts had been thrown over the place, torn apart by the ferocity of the battle that had raged here.

Pablo's feet tangled in something and he went down with a cry onto the sharp rocks, cutting his hands and wrists deep, tearing the front of his uniform. His rifle scuttled from his grip and a voice barked behind him to pick it and himself up. He watched as a slim Sergeant careered past, and Pablo looked down to see that his boots had become snagged by telephone wires from a communication base. He picked himself out of the trap and staggered on, wiping his hands, slick with blood, on the front of his coat, seeing that Corporal Abelli was waiting for him, crouched in a shell hole, the bottom of which was filled with blood.

“I have no ammo left!” he cried pitifully to another soldier, reaching out to him with a clawing hand. “I have no ammo left!” He realised that he sounded pathetic and desperate and the soldier didn't turn to look at him. “Help me! I have nothing to fight with!” He shook him by the shoulder and the soldier toppled over onto him, dead, a great hole punched through his chest.