The familiar, comforting stink of a mutie encampment enveloped him, putting him at ease. ‘Take meat to cooks,’ he rumbled, gesturing with his axe. His warriors trooped past him, and into the sea of ragged tents and shabby hab-shelters that filled the bottom of the ancient reservoir.

  This far down, the underhive barely resembled the industrial landscape of its upper reaches. Great bowers of fruiting fungi swayed in the noisome breeze, and treacly brooks of sump-water stretched across the broken ground towards deep pores, full of glistening ­liquid. Strange, scuttling things slunk through the undergrowth as mutie children stalked them with handmade catapults and knives of sharpened bone.

  The sides of the reservoir rose upwards like the battlements of a fortress. Curtains of mould hung down, obscuring much of the old ferrocrete structure, and a web of bracing girders threaded through the upper reaches. The girders had become the foundation of a shanty town of walkways and lean-tos, connected to the reservoir’s bottom by a conglomerate walkway of pipes, planks and salvaged metal cladding. As Slabscale’s warriors spread out through the camp, muties descended from ropes of woven wire and cabling and spilled across the lower walkways to ring the rusted tocsins that hung at every crossway.

  Slabscale ignored the alarms, as he always did. Alarms were for softlings, not mutants. Sometimes he wondered why the camp even had them. It wasn’t as if they had anything a raider might want. Every mutie band worth the name was already here, anyway. And more were arriving by the day. Queen Wart had commanded, and her people were quick to obey, if they knew what was good for them.

  He snorted at the thought. His cousin had high-minded ideas and fancied herself a queen. She had the bodies and the guns and the drive to do it, no doubt. But it meant that every mutie with guts and ambition was gunning to be her king. So many of them, they got underfoot. But more bodies was good. More bodies meant more successful raids. It also meant less quiet for him and his kind.

  He stomped through the camp, longing to seek the deep, soft green of the sump-pits below the reservoir. Muties hastily made way for him, though a few called out greetings or insults or both. Slabscale ignored them, shoving aside any mutie too slow for his liking. There were more tents than last time. More wretched softlings, cluttering up the place.

  A scab-hound barked at him from atop a chunk of rubble, its hairless hide dotted with boils and its reptilian tail lashing. Slabscale whirled and snarled, frightening the beast. It fled, yelping. Slabscale grunted in satisfaction and rubbed his stomach. The stink of cooking fires filled the air, and he turned, seeking the source.

  Nearby, muties hacked at a mountainous lump of congealed fat, grease and waste, as others readied the fires. More muties hooked smaller lumps with harpoons and dragged them from the dregs of the great reservoir. The lumps would be butchered and cooked for the camp. Slabscale licked his teeth, suddenly ravenous.

  ‘You went out with more men,’ a high, thin voice said. ‘Or am I mistaken?’

  Slabscale grunted and turned. The mutie who’d addressed him shrank back slightly, one hand on the hilt of the curved blade sheathed by his side. Several others watched from nearby. Slabscale recognised them all, if not by name then by face or stink. Chieftains and warlords, or so they styled themselves. The one who’d spoken was known as Fung.

  ‘No mistake,’ Slabscale rumbled. ‘Ambush. On the transit-path.’

  ‘They ambushed you? Or you ambushed them, and screwed it up?’ Fung lifted his warty chin as he spoke, in a parody of arrogance. Fung was tall, for a mutie, and lean. His skin was the colour and consistency of pipe-mould, and he wore scavenged flak armour over filthy robes. His dust-coloured hair was bound up in a topknot over his narrow skull. ‘Like last time, I mean,’ he added. The others chuckled sycophantically.

  Fung liked to think of himself as a king of the deeps. With a full three clans of muties under his thumb, he had some claim to the title. But Slabscale was not a softling, and did not care what Fung called himself.

  Even so, the jibe stung. The ambush had gone badly, though that just meant there was meat for the pot. Slabscale hadn’t taken part. He’d simply watched as his warriors were gunned down by Cawdor fanatics, or ripped apart by Goliaths. He’d longed to match his strength against that of the bloated softlings, but prudence – and the ache of his still healing wounds – had restrained him.

  The softlings had got away, but they were heading in the right direction – Perdition. The more of them who made it, the greater the feast to come. His stomach grumbled and he scratched at his scars again. He gazed down at Fung, considering.

  ‘You want to fight me?’

  Fung blinked, and Slabscale knew he’d hit the mark. His yellow gaze slid across the faces of the others. Some looked away. Some didn’t. Mutie bands had high turnover when it came to leaders. Promotion came at the point of a blade, or a well-placed bullet. And these days, with clans merging, and tribes becoming one, the pecking order was getting rearranged regularly. He sighed.

  It was all his cousin’s fault.

  Fung stepped back, baring broken teeth in a grimace. Slabscale set his axe down and cracked his knuckles. ‘Come. We fight.’

  Fung was quick, and frightened. A deadly combination. He glanced at his fellows, then drew his blade and lunged. Slabscale saw the look, and knew what it meant. Muties didn’t believe in fighting fair. He caught the blade as it swung towards him and yanked it from Fung’s hand. He twisted around and smashed the hilt down on the head of the chieftain who’d been sneaking up on him.

  As the mutie collapsed, Slabscale snatched up his axe and bisected another too slow to avoid the blow. The others fled, leaving Fung to his fate. Slabscale turned and grinned at him. Fung fumbled for the pistol holstered on his belt. Slabscale raised his axe.

  ‘Wait.’ A creaky voice intervened.

  Slabscale stopped. Fung scrambled away, whimpering and cursing. Slabscale lowered his axe and turned.

  ‘Tud,’ he said, by way of greeting.

  The mutie was old, which in itself was impressive. Most muties didn’t live long. But Tud was old and bent and worn down to a cantankerous nub. He held himself erect with the aid of a walking stick, and wore a pair of broken spectacles over his watery eyes. Mangy furs hid his arthritic form. Bones hung from his neck and chest, clattering as he stumped and wheezed towards Slabscale.

  ‘You’re back. Good. She’ll want to see you.’ Tud peered down at the dead chieftains and clucked his tongue. ‘Fools.’ He gestured to a nearby group of muties. ‘Ready them for the feast tonight. Make sure Fung gets their faces.’

  ‘You should let me kill him.’

  ‘And then who would lead his warriors?’

  ‘Me.’

  Tud looked up at him. Despite the spectacles, and the opacity of his eyes, Slabscale could feel the heat of his gaze. Tud hadn’t lived so long by being a fool, or weak. He was cunning, more so than softlings like Fung. Tud had a hard soul in his withered frame – cold and pragmatic. He had never been a chieftain, to Slabscale’s know­ledge, but he had made himself useful to many of them.

  ‘You lead too many warriors already. The other chieftains mutter into their fungus beer about you. A lizard – sitting on the queen’s council?’ Tud shook his head. ‘They do not like it.’

  Slabscale shrugged. ‘They not have to.’

  ‘True. But legitimacy requires the illusion of consideration.’ Tud smiled, exposing blackened nubs where his teeth had once been. ‘If the Queen is to rule, she must seem to be a benevolent monarch. Not like King Redwart or Lord Blacktongue.’

  Slabscale shook his head. Tud’s words made little sense to him, but he did not argue. Tud had book learning, the wisdom of paper and tutors. He had once been an uphiver, or so he claimed. Now he was down here, with the rest of the garbage. Slabscale didn’t know what had brought Tud to the depths. Nor did he care. But he trusted him. Had trusted him since he’d been a hatchling.

  ‘Slabscale not kill them,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Not yet, at any rate.’ Tud patted him on the arm. Horns sounded from deeper in the camp. Mutie heads turned, and a murmur swept through the nearby groups. Tud gestured. ‘Come. She will be making her entrance soon, and we should be there to meet her.’

  Slabscale accompanied the elderly mutie towards the far end of the camp, where an old trail wound upwards to the rim of the reservoir. The trail had been carved by the steady leakage of sump-waters centuries ago, and was now a hard path of sediment and stone, marked by stakes of wood and metal. On each stake, a skull had been placed. Some of the skulls were brown with age, but others were still wet with the blood of their previous owners.

  The path led up to what had once been a maintenance chamber for the reservoir. Over the years, the ancient structure had been modified by holesteaders, tithe-hunters and outlaws, both to take advantage of the path and the state of the reservoir itself. What had once been smooth stone was now a barnacled overhang of steel extensions, reinforced again and again until it had become a veritable bunker. Crude banners, made from animal hides and stolen cloth, hung from the underside of the overhang.

  The bunker overlooked the reservoir and the zone around it. Stolen stubbers and frag-cannons had been mounted behind emplacements, or placed high in rickety towers that tottered over the bubbling sump-falls. Searchlights – some of which even worked – were chained to the walls, their faces angled in all directions. Jury-rigged klaxons had been mounted among the crenellations of the outer wall.

  A blast-hatch, stolen from some forgotten hab-unit, sat at the top of the path, marking the entrance to the bunker. As Slabscale and Tud joined the crowd of outlandish individuals arrayed along the bottom of the path, the hatch squealed open, and the klaxons began to sound. The process always took an inordinate amount of time, so Slabscale spent the interminable moments studying the nearby dignitaries.

  They were a motley assortment of outlanders – mutie chieftains, scummer bosses and even a few renegade ratskins. The muties had gone to ridiculous efforts to make themselves presentable. Hair had been slicked back with promethium gel or fat, robes and trousers patched, wounds bandaged, buckles shined. The scummer bosses were outlaws and bandits, men and women on the wrong end of a guilder warrant. Some still wore their House regalia, while others were nondescript killers. The ratskins were the most curious of all – oathbreakers, cannibals and witches, they were ostracised, even by their own kin.

  This, then, was the court of Queen Wart. Mutants, madmen and monsters. And him, of course. Her loyal cousin. Slabscale snorted and picked at his scars.

  Tud glanced up at him. ‘What’s so amusing?’

  ‘This. Stupid.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it is also necessary.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For whom. For us. For the outcast and the forgotten. For the huddlers in darkness, and the abandoned children of the Spire. This is simply the beginning, my boy. Humble, uncertain – but every tale of triumph must have its first, faltering step.’ Tud beamed up at him, gaze fervent behind his spectacles.

  Slabscale, uncomfortable, turned away. His cousin had begun her descent, and it was always worth watching, just to see what new extravagance she’d added to the process.

  At the moment, a giant rat padded down the sump-trail, its mangy flesh riddled with sores and its eyes weeping with pus. On its bony back was a crude howdah, made from scrap. Around the beast marched an honour-guard of mutants, including several brutes. The mutants were of all shapes and sizes, united only in their disunity. They wore heavy robes the colour of sump-water and had armour and weapons scavenged from some unlucky guilder caravan.

  Marching out in front, a mutant with tall horns and a face like an open wound hefted a makeshift standard, decorated with dozens of jawbones, some human, most not. ‘Make way, make way for the Marchioness of Toads, the Lady of Scabs, her royal magnanimousness – Queen Wart,’ this herald croaked, as the procession wound its way down the sump-trail. Slabscale looked around, saw that everyone else was kneeling, and grudgingly dropped to one knee.

  Queen Wart sat atop the clattering howdah, her starveling frame wrapped in filthy rags cast off by a Spire noblewoman at some point in the past. She fluttered a ripped fan before her face, and took an occasional toke from a long hookah made from a polished femur. Her flesh was the colour of mildew, and her face was covered in a healthy layer of encrustation. She was young, as muties judged such things – less than thirty, though by how much Slabscale didn’t know. Numbers larger than could be counted on his fingers confused and infuriated him.

  He was older than her, though not by much. Such things mattered less to a mutant than to a softling. His kind didn’t really age – they just got harder to kill.

  The rat came to a halt at the bottom of the path and sank to its haunches with a disgruntled hiss. The herald had handed off his standard and knelt beside the rat, falling onto all fours so that Queen Wart could step down from her howdah and onto his back. Her mutants gathered about her, and helped her down.

  She greeted the waiting dignitaries with an effusion of warm regard. The muties tripped over each other in their haste to return her greetings, their blistered lips pressed to her knuckles and the tips of her shoes. The scummers were more sedate in their acknowledgement, but were respectful, as were the ratskins. Queen Wart was rich in the currency of power – the only kind that mattered this far down.

  When she stopped before Tud, her smile became real. ‘Oh, Master Tud – it warms my heart to see you here, my old teacher. Were you successful?’

  ‘I was, my queen,’ Tud said, as he endeavoured to bow. He gave up after a few moments, breathless and creaking. ‘The Master of the Dead has agreed to aid you, should you prove victorious in your campaign against the settlement of Perdition. Destroy it, and your claim to power will be a legitimate one, in his eyes.’

  Queen Wart sighed and nodded in obvious relief. ‘Good. That is good. One less thing to fear, one less enemy to fight.’ She looked at Slabscale. ‘Cousin,’ she said, her voice like the gurgling of water through a dainty pipe. The mutant bared his teeth in a show of respect. She plucked a mould-worm from her servant’s bowl and popped it between her frayed lips. ‘You come back lighter than when you left, I hear.’

  ‘Swallowed grenade,’ he rumbled.

  She tittered and her servants mimicked her. She swatted him on the snout with her fan. ‘That’s not what I meant, dearest cousin.’

  Slabscale considered biting her hand off, but restrained himself. She was family, after all. ‘Ambush. Uphivers. Well armed.’

  ‘Going to Perdition?’

  Slabscale nodded.

  ‘And there are stories that the man called Desolation has returned as well. Does this strike you as coincidence, cousin-mine?’

  Slabscale thought about it a moment. Then he shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘No, my thoughts exactly. Come, we must speak on these matters with my generals.’ She hooked his arm with her own and led him up the path. ‘I fear your axe will be needed at the forefront of this war, my lovely. I do hope you have recovered sufficiently for the battle to come.’

  Slabscale scratched at his scars and grinned.

  ‘Looking forward to it,’ he growled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  PERDITION’S GATE

  Kal stared at the beastman. ‘How did you even get this close to the settlement? The shanty town is probably crawling with Redemptionists.’

  Gor didn’t lower his weapon. ‘I got my ways. Now drop the sword.’

  ‘You’re not going to shoot me.’

  Gor bared his teeth. ‘We’re even now, remember? I don’t owe you nothing, Jerico.’ He gave the shotgun a twitch. ‘I’d hate to wake every­one up. Drop ’em.’

  Kal bent and stabbed his sword into the ground. ‘You followed Zoon’s trail from Down Town?’

  ‘No. I knew he wouldn’t stay there long. I came by way of Red Shaft – mining camp, south of Down Town. Cawdor run it. I happened to hear that Lodian Kreel and Dax Pavo were setting up an ambush out there for somebody. Put two and two together, figured he’d stop for help there.’

  ‘Did he?’

  Gor’s grin was unsettling. ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Kreel and Pavo?’

  ‘Kreel was still breathing last I saw. Pavo, not so much.’ Gor snorted. ‘Less competition for me, less ammunition for Zoon.’

  ‘Yeah, about that,’ Yolanda said. She stepped out of the shadows of the fallen gantry, her autopistol levelled. ‘The stink of the sump really plays havoc with that nose of yours, doesn’t it?’ She glanced at Kal. ‘Pick up your sword, Jerico, you look like an idiot.’

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Kal retrieved his weapon and sheathed it with a flourish. ‘Looks like you’re out of luck, Gor. Now back off – I’d hate for Yolanda to put a bullet in that oh-so-pretty head of yours.’

  Gor snarled, the sound startling nearby rubbish-pickers. But he lowered his shotgun. Scabbs joined Yolanda, Amanute and Wotan following him.

  ‘Where did you lot come from?’ Kal asked. He watched the rubbish-pickers slink away, and wondered how long it would be before someone came to investigate.

  ‘Borrowed a boat while the Cawdor were preoccupied,’ Yolanda said, not taking her eyes off Gor.

  ‘Borrowed?’

  ‘Stole,’ Scabbs corrected. He glanced towards the opposite shore, where the sounds of gunfire still echoed. ‘Still feel a bit bad about that. We left a lot of people stranded.’

  ‘They’re armed,’ Yolanda said, bluntly. ‘And the muties were retreating, anyway.’

  ‘What now?’ Gor growled.

  ‘We could shoot you.’ Yolanda smiled. ‘I’ve always fancied a beastman rug.’ Gor looked at her and snarled. The shotgun in his hands twitched. Gor had a short fuse and it was swiftly burning down.

 

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