Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [92]
Frey lowered the cargo ramp and they began hauling the crates out. The sun hammered them as they emerged from the cool shadow of the Ketty Jay. The air was moist and smelled of wet clay, and there was a lingering scent of gunpowder.
“Where do you want ’em?” Kenham called to Frey. Frey vaguely waved at a clear spot some way downhill, close to the trenches. He didn’t want those boxes of ammo too near the Ketty Jay when he took off. Kenham rolled his eyes—all the way over there?—but he didn’t protest.
Frey leaned against the Ketty Jay’s landing strut with the bottle of rum in his hand and watched the rest of his crew do the work. Since it took two men to a box, a fifth worker would only get in the way, he reasoned. Besides, it was captain’s privilege to be lazy. He swigged from the bottle and surveyed the empty site. For the first time he noted that there were some signs of conflict: burn marks on the walls of the red stone houses; sections where the earthworks had been blasted and soil scattered.
Old wounds? This place had probably seen a lot of action. But then, there was that smell of gunpowder. Weapons had been fired, and recently.
He cast a bleary eye over his crew, to be sure they were getting on with their job, and then pushed off from the landing strut and wandered away from the Ketty Jay. He headed toward the village.
The houses were poor Samarlan peasant dwellings, bare and abandoned. Wooden chicken runs and pigpens had fallen into ruin. The windows were just square holes in the walls, some of them with their shutters hanging unevenly, drifting back and forth in the faint breeze. As Frey got closer, he could see more obvious signs of recent attacks. Some walls were riddled with bullet holes.
His skin began to prickle with sweat. He drained the last of the rum and tossed the bottle aside.
The dwellings were built around a central clearing that once had been grassy but was now churned into rapidly drying mud. Frey peered around the corner of the nearest house. Despite the racket from the forest birds, it was unnervingly quiet.
He looked through the window, into the house. The furniture had long gone, leaving a mean, bare shell, dense with hot shadow. The sun outside was so bright that it was hard to see. It took him a few seconds to spot the man in the corner.
He was slumped, motionless, beneath a window on the other side of the house. Frey could hear flies and smell blood.
By now his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. Enough to see that the man was dead, shot through the cheek, his jaw hanging askew and pasted onto his face with dried gore. Enough to see that he was wearing a Vardic uniform. Enough to see that he was one of theirs.
He heard a sound: sharp and hard, like someone stepping on a branch. The voices of his crew, suddenly raised in a clamor.
With a cold flood of nausea, he realized what was happening. Panic plunged in on him, and he bolted, running for the only safety he knew. Running for the Ketty Jay.
As he rounded the corner of the house, he saw Kenham lying facedown next to a sundered crate. Jodd was backing away from the trenches, firing his revolver at the men who were clambering out of them. Rifle-wielding Dakkadians: two dozen or more. Small, blond-haired, faces broad and eyes narrow. They’d hidden when they heard the Ketty Jay approaching. Perhaps they’d even had time to throw the bodies of the dead Vards into the trenches. Now they were springing their ambush.
Rabby and Martley were fleeing headlong toward the Ketty Jay, as Frey was. There was fear on their faces.
One of the Dakkadians fell back into the trench with a howl as Jodd scored a hit, but their numbers were overwhelming. Three others sighted and shot him dead.
Frey barely registered Jodd’s fate. The world was a bouncing, jolting agony of moment after moment, each one bringing him a fraction closer to the gaping mouth of the Ketty Jay’s cargo ramp. His only chance was to get inside. His only chance to live.
Dakkadian rifles cracked