City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [157]
‘Don’t try that stuff with me, Malum,’ Beami snapped. ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed to get your hands on those things.’
‘I’ve got contacts,’ he growled. He was getting really pissed off with her. She should be dead by now, her body stiffening in a shallow grave alongside her new lover.
‘Why don’t you just leave us alone?’ she snapped.
Two of the Bloods fired off their crossbows: swift bolts were caught in the strips of light and hung there. It was difficult to see properly in the darkness, but Malum crouched by the wall and prepared to take out the soldier himself. The Night Guard soldier continued to bury his arrows in members of the Bloods with a frightening efficiency, and Malum wondered how he could see so well in this light.
Beami dispersed her electric strands in wide arcs, filling the corridor from wall to wall, and she gradually shifted this barrier of light forward so that Malum’s men could only retreat—
– Suddenly an explosion: one of the outside walls shattered, filling their confined space with masonry dust, while a sharp blast of winter air blew inside. Everyone stopped, and began whispering urgently in confusion.
‘Fuck was that?’ someone coughed.
Shouts drifted up to them from the street below, men giving orders, a woman screaming—
– A whistle, then a dull explosion.
Malum scrambled backwards through the rubble, stepping over the bloodied limbs of two of his fallen men, and looked out through the broken wall on the city facing the coast. All over it there were soldiers, moving like a plague of rats infesting Villiren, their footsteps clumping in unison across the streets. A bell began to toll, deep and resounding, bringing the city to a standstill.
‘What’s going on, Malum?’ someone asked.
He had no idea. Several of his gang stood by his side, staring in shock at what had happened, and only then did he register the fact that something had struck the outside of the hotel. It seemed absurd something could hit a building at this height.
By his feet, a man was buried under the shattered wall, his mouth opening and closing but no words were generated, and on realizing this very fact, the man’s face creased up in agony.
Strange, Malum thought.
Another whistle, another explosion, somewhere down to the right: a two-storey row of cheap flats coughed up dust and smoke. There came more screams, and soon further alarm bells were tolling.
Malum scrambled back into the damaged corridor, noting the absence of Beami and her soldier-lover. He kicked in the door to find their room abandoned.
The damn woman had escaped him.
*
Beami and Lupus sprinted at full-tilt past bewildered citizens. Hiuiver strapped tight to his back and bow still in hand, he was nopeaking to her with great urgency. The bell was calling him back the Citadel.
The war was beginning.
Something hit a building somewhere above their heads and stonework crashed a full forty feet behind them.
What the fuck caused that? Was it a missile of some description?
Beami turned and noticed a ruined cafe ahead, still smouldering from the heat of an explosion. People milled around outside, children crying, men shouting muddled orders, and shattered glass was crunched into the thin layer of snow. As they watched, three men and a woman were being hauled from the rubble to safety. Beami and Lupus approached these survivors to see if they needed any further help, but when they tried to respond, no sounds came forth. They faced each other aghast, pointed to their throats and gave a silent scream.
All three had been muted.
Beami gazed up at the sound of another whistle: a missile was heading through the air directly at a ruptured firegrain pipe, where it impacted to send a thin stream of liquid fire deep into the sky, lighting up the cityscape. They ducked instinctively as bits of stone clattered down. Silence, briefly, then the tolling bells