Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [149]
“Yes!” she said. “Yes, we can hide out in the caves!”
She clutched at the sanity he offered, soothed by the strength and certainty in his voice. Riss had held a candle for her ever since they’d started working together, as pilot and navigator for Professor Malstrom’s expeditionary team. She liked him as a friend but had never been able to summon up any feelings deeper than that.
He’d always been protective of her. It was a trait she found annoying: she interpreted it as possessiveness. But now she was ashamed to realize she wanted a protector. She’d crumbled in the face of the horror bearing down on them, and he hadn’t. She clung to him gratefully as he lifted her up and helped her put on her pack.
The thoroughfare was eerily deserted when they emerged. The dreadnought had gone, and the blizzard was closing in, cutting visibility down to fifteen meters. The chill began to seep into them immediately, even through their protective clothing. From somewhere in the skirling mêlée of snowflakes came distant yells and the report of shotguns. Piercing, inhuman howls floated after them.
They stayed close to the buildings. Jez hung on to Riss as he led her toward the edge of town, where a crude trail led up the mountain to the glacier. The excavation site was up there.
They’d not gone far when there was the roar of an engine and a blaze of light up ahead. Gunfire erupted, startlingly close. Riss pulled Jez into the gap between two domed Yort dwellings, and they hid behind a grit bin as a snow tractor came racing up the thoroughfare. The boxy metal vehicles were usually employed to haul supplies and personnel back and forth from the glacier, but someone was trying to escape on one. The Manes had other ideas: there were four of them swarming all over it, trying to drag the doors open or punch their way in through the glass. Jez glimpsed them in the backwash of the headlamps as they passed—ghoulish, feral approximations of men and women—and then the speeding snow tractor fishtailed on the icy ground. It slewed sideways for an instant before its tracks bit and flung it into the wall of a building.
The Manes abandoned the snow tractor as several Yorts, wielding shotguns, came backing up the thoroughfare, firing into the blizzard, where more shadowy figures were darting on the edges of visibility. Manes prowled on all fours along rooftops or slunk close to the ground. They flitted and flickered, moving in fast jerks. They jumped from one spot to another without seeming to pass through the distance between.
Jez cringed as she saw the Manes spread out to encircle their victims. She wanted to run, to break from hiding and flee, but Riss held her tight.
The Yorts wore furs and masks. The Manes wore ragged clothes more suited to a mild spring day in Vardia. The cold, which would kill an unprotected human in minutes, meant nothing to them.
She turned away and burrowed into Riss’s arms as the Manes sprang inward as one. She’d closed her eyes to the sight, but she couldn’t shut out the screams of men and the exultant howls of the Manes. Mercifully, it was over in seconds.
Once done, there was silence. It was a short while before Riss stirred and looked out. The sounds of conflict still drifted out of the blizzard, but the Manes had moved elsewhere.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Jez obeyed, reluctant to leave the relative safety of the grit bin. His footsteps crunched across the thoroughfare, fading away. For a time, all she heard were faint gunshots and barked commands, carried on the breeze. Then his footsteps came crunching back. She looked out and saw him carrying a cutlass in one hand. There were several dead men scattered across the thoroughfare, their blood stark against the snow. At least three were missing. Not dead but taken. Stolen by the Manes to crew their terrible craft.
Riss hunkered down in front of her. “The man in the snow tractor is dead,” he said. He held up the cutlass. “I got this.”
“What about a gun? Don’t we need a gun?”
He wiggled his fingers inside his thick