City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [183]
‘How old was he?’ red mask asked softly.
‘Two years in only six more days. We was going to have a nice time, just me and him. His father left . . .’ She began to sob again, hugging her dead son to her chest, and rocking back and forth as if to soothe the corpse into an even deeper state of rest.
The man stood up, glancing briefly at Marysa and the others who had stopped to watch. A man behind grumbled at them to get out of the way.
Red mask’s gang had now assembled, a sizeable outlaw regiment waiting for their commander to speak. They wore feral masks. Metal glinted beneath their well-made cloaks. Many of them looked young, under twenty at least.
‘We’re going back,’ the man decided.
‘Boss?’
The man spoke firmly, did not even raise his voice. ‘We are going back.’ He lifted up his mask to reveal handsome features, which surprised her. ‘Give this poor woman some damn money and a decent cart and one of you – I don’t care who – make sure she gets out to safety.’
‘Why are we going back up there?’ demanded the redhead. ‘We do that, we all get killed.’
The boss grabbed the man’s collar and lifted him up onto his toes. ‘See the dead kid? How many more of those d’you think there’ll be if people like us don’t do something? I’ve changed my mind. Put word out, to round up affiliated gangs. Tell them, one of us goes down, we all go down together – that’s what we’re all about.’ He dropped the fellow, shoved his way back through the other men. They looked at each other, shrugging. No one knew what to make of this change of plan.
‘What difference can we make?’ the redhead called out after him, but it wasn’t any use.
The man in the red mask had vanished.
*
If they were going to do it at all, they would have to do it his way.
A hub of fifty or so Bloods soon became an aggregate of dozens: hundreds of masked fighters from the various gangs who, somewhere along the lines, had stopped caring only about themselves. Or maybe many of them had begun to understand just what it meant if they didn’t have a home, if they didn’t have others to intimidate, if they didn’t have rackets to engage in.
They now listened only to Malum, and their own leaders backed down. It was futile even for them to oppose this acrimonious band. Reluctantly the military had handed over weapons and armour, realizing that this change of heart was in everyone’s best interest. And, anyway, it wasn’t their city, this wasn’t their turf. It had always belonged to the gangs of Villiren and Malum wanted to keep things that way.
He was distantly aware of just how powerful he had become, but even that didn’t matter at all. He was a shattered man, and didn’t give a fuck if he got killed. People afraid of dying usually possessed something worth losing. It was possible that many of the other Bloods felt the same – all they had ever had was the gang anyway. They would do anything for him now.
He didn’t know how it happened, but ever since he had seen all these people underground, especially since he had seen the children with their haunted faces and tenuous futures, he had managed to focus his anger on the things that were invading his city.
The Okun and those red-skinned rumel.
Dirty relics and illegal blades and outlawed poisons, the gangs began to use every nefarious piece of equipment they could get their hands on. Archaic systems were established, a no-leader culture despite their reverence for Malum, and as a result they became surprisingly well organized, a rough but self-sufficient fighting unit, with no need for Imperial direction. Some of the more primitive, barbarous types were in their element, able to indulge finally in killing as much as they could. There was something strangely poetic about the freedom they now operated with.
While the Okun possessed an instinct for knowing exactly what was coming, the red rumel made easier targets. Unlike their allies, they didn’t fight as one, so their small patrols were easily hunted down by the feral gangsters.
Malum himself was armed