City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [163]
The next evening he finds his wife has bled to death in the bath. Her wrists were slashed so crudely he knows she must have taken a long, painful time to die.
That is where it began.
*
Malum flicked a stone at one of the windows of the house, and it pinged off harmlessly. Was it any wonder he hated the military? He would never fight alongside them, no matter what the argument, no matter how much the Night Guard pleaded with him.
He had never risen above that day his life was smashed, where his dearest hopes had died. Eventually, after the witch had helped him, in his new-found bitterness, he turned his young trading empire into a criminal enterprise, channelling his anger.
His cadre had built up around him. They became his family and, eventually, they shared his blood. They stood by him without question, would carve open any enemy on his behalf.
After you see your son killed in such a way, and you find your wife dead from despair, you don’t care about much else other than doing whatever you can to capture whatever satisfaction you can from the world.
*
The city was beginning another day.
Traders headed to the irens rolling their carts along by hand. Citizens were moving about their routines, some in masks, bustling about, getting on with their own lives. Bitterly, he noticed a unit of Dragoons trotting past the end of the street. He looked up at the house one last time and then turned to disappear into the fog, wishing that he might be lost forever in its mass.
FORTY-ONE
Few people were blessed or cursed enough to have their own moment in life, a window of time in which they were the centre of the world and everything revolved around them. Tonight Brynd had a whole city waiting on his every word and, no matter what he said, there would be bodies littering the streets on a scale no one would comprehend.
The mute bombs had changed the texture of the city, the spirit, the geography. Now thousands of people were gathering around the barracks and the Citadel demanding action and protection. Portreeve Lutto had vanished completely. Villiren was Brynd’s to control.
With the Night Guard lined up behind him, Brynd addressed the citizens of Villiren at regular intervals for half a day, from a platform high up on the Citadel walls, one that offered too much grandeur for his liking. The crowd huddled below, or amid the thick stone arches and pillars. His throat was raw from repeating his message into the cold wind:
‘There is no need for you to panic,’ he lied.
‘But what do we do?’ came the reply. ‘Tell us what to do.’
Years of yielding to the will of the portreeve had left these people with no self-sufficiency. He issued instructions for those unwilling to fight to head underground, into the escape tunnels. ‘We are to roll the city out past the Wasteland district and into the wilderness, establishing temporary villages beyond Wych-Forest, the other side of the Spoil Tower and Vanr Tundra, or sheltering in disused mining networks. We have ensured basic supplies to cater for this temporary solution. The military stationed on the perimeter of the city are now being brought in, unit by unit, tens of thousands of soldiers, most of the Empire’s available resources. We will ensure the stability of the city within.’
Out of this city of several hundred thousand residents, the citizen militias just managed to match the official military presence. There were forty thousand extra people willing to fight, and a total force of, he estimated, eighty thousand. Over the past few weeks, Brynd had ensured the blacksmiths were developing enough weaponry for them. Citizens only now signing up were attached to their own regiments based on the streets they lived in, neighbourhood comrades, with military personnel to guide them through their basic training. Sadly, hardly any of the gangs had opted to join, and none of them were the most violent sort, the few thousand truly skilled civilian fighters in the Bloods or the Screams.
Ten cultists had enlisted, which surprised