City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [204]
As they shuffled into the main ward everyone stopped and gawked at the scene in disbelief.
‘Dear, Bohr no!’ someone exclaimed.
Rows after row of the makeshift beds had been toppled over. Lying on the floor, or in whatever postures they could manage, were hideously deformed patients. No, it was worse than deformed – they had had things grafted on to them, appendages that were from . . . other creatures.
‘Fucking hell,’ another voice gasped.
‘Bring some torches so we can see what’s going on in here,’ Brynd ordered.
Light arrived. Hundreds of men and women were revealed to possess furred or scaly replacement appendages, limbs ripped from reptiles, or legs transplanted from horses, or heads grafted and grown from invertebrates. The rumel patients had been similarly deformed, grafted with human heads and hands, amassed in stockpiles. They groaned and wept with shock and depression, for as far as you could see. To one side lay the dismembered corpses of the doctors and nurses who had been tending to them, their entrails strewn across their bodies.
And up near the ceiling hovered something like wraiths or ghosts. A trick of the light perhaps?
A soldier came running towards them clutching a note, which he thrust towards Brynd. ‘Found it on that guy at the far end of the ward. Hanged himself by his shirt – think he’s been dead for some time.’
Brynd read it, shaking his head: ‘It’s from Doctor Voland and it says simply: “If you manage to survive this war, here’s to your happy ending. May it be as happy as mine was. Fuck you all. Sincerely, Voland.”’
The noises being transmitted from these people-monsters were alarming. Many of these things tried to lumber towards them, but collapsed almost as soon as they moved, being unused to having spurious limbs. An elderly female, with giant dog-legs for arms, pawed at a soldier before someone pushed her over. One man with a lizard head managed to get close before someone shot the thing with a crossbow.
Brynd ordered everyone to get out of there, and they firmly bolted the door.
Was there no end to the horrors?
FIFTY-TWO
The Exmachina droned across the skies. It seemed to be taking forever to reach Villiren. In the distance, the columns of smoke did not provide a good omen.
They must be funeral pyres, he thought. Bloody hell, how many people can have died?
The city looked flat – either by design or from war damage, he couldn’t tell. It wasn’t at all like Villjamur. The sea lay beyond, a darker expanse of grey that merged indiscernibly with the sky.
Eir joined him and surveyed the view. ‘Rika’s still the same,’ she fretted.
It seemed Eir could not let up on how much her sister had changed. Randur kept telling her she was probably now safer under Artemisia’s protection than they could manage for her themselves. It made his own life easier, anyway – this was what he wanted to say, but instead he dutifully listened to her complaints.
‘Doesn’t look good out there,’ he observed, trying to change the subject.
‘I’m still not sure how we’re going to go about this.’
‘I’m sure she’ll have it all planned.’
‘She has schemes for everything, I’d wager,’ Eir said. ‘I still don’t trust her.’
Just then Artemisia strolled up to them, dressed in full battle gear.
‘I think the city’s seen better days,’ Randur said, gesturing over the edge of the ship.
‘It probably has. But it stands, which is an achievement. Your military is rather useful, it seems, and this bodes well.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Randur asked.
‘We ourselves shall enter the city, while the Exmachina continues onwards. I plan to have it destroy the gateways through which this invasion originated. I guarantee it will disrupt the sentience of the enemy.’
‘How?’
‘They relay their inter-communications via the gateways and my own dimension.’
Relay their inter-communications? Randur didn’t understand the terms, the definitions. ‘Which means?’
‘They can’t talk to each other unless they