Jude stared at his own reflection in the dirty mirror. The brilliant white light seeping through from the giant clockface bathed him. “What a mess,” he said aloud, eyeing the purple swelling around his face and the jagged red scar on his forehead. His eyes, no longer bright with life, were quiet and dull. His face, usually resting sheepish and cheerful, now a shadow of its usual self, looked back at him sombre and grim.
The low buzz of an old hair clipper cut through the silence of the room. He raised it to his head, pressing the cold metal teeth to his scalp. Closing his eyes, he ran it through his locks of golden hair, ignoring the clumps as they fluttered to the floor.
He sighed deep as he felt for patches of hair on the back of his head. Something within him was different. Vengeful, angry. Boiling resentment gnawed at him. Even when his father left and his mother took her own life, he had seen the light in it all. He mourned, of course. But he got over it. He didn’t blame anyone, just Croc.
Croc was the enemy, not the addicts. That was the idea that had dragged him through the grief. Now all he could feel was hate. He thought of Marcus the snake, the addict. “Crochead bastard!” he hissed out loud, tears creeping from the corners of his swollen eyes. He saw him again, plunging the knife into Lisa. She was innocent and defenceless.
Then there was Brunner, the Captain of the Guard, charged with protecting the people. How could he have executed a great man like Trevor? For what? A tax code violation, or because he put a spot of dirt on his precious uniform? Shot dead on his back in mud and filth.
His argument with Zuri seemed so stupid now. He scoffed at himself for being so sensitive. Zuri’s words came rushing back to him – Open your eyes, Jude! They’re a plague. They were scum before they were Crocheads, and they’re scum now they are Crocheads. He understood it now. Maybe she was right. Maybe not. His head was cloudy and swirling.
Was she right? Marcus was a sneaky, malicious snake. He always had been, Jude wagered. The Croc addiction most likely didn’t change him at all. So what then of his father? Perhaps he was a weak man who he had just viewed through the ever-loving eyes of a son. He slapped himself hard across the face and stifled a scream of sadness and rage. He didn’t know what he believed anymore, but for the first time in his life, he wanted blood.
He flicked the switch on the clippers, killing the buzz, and placed them down on the side of the sink, taking in his handiwork. The slightest hint of a grin threatened to break through his sombre grimace. For the first time in his life, he cut an intimidating figure.
His head shaved to the bone amplified the jagged scar jutting through his forehead and striking down to his eyes. They were ringed with dark swelling. His nose was fat at the bridge, with purple pooling under the skin. His boyish, angular jaw was now speckled with the beginnings of a sandy stubble. Turning from the mirror, he crossed the room and eased himself to the bed with a groan, and reaching under, he pulled out his bow and sat with it upon his knees, clutching the grip. His father’s face flashed into his mind, but as quick as it had arrived, he banished it.
He placed his bow on the bed and stood over it, delicately removing the bow string, which he placed alongside. The blankets hanging on the wall were of varying shades of grey, and each had a different size and weight. Selecting a relatively small and light woollen blanket in a slate grey, he carefully wrapped the bow and string, taking a length of thin leather from Ansell’s locker to tie the bundle.
Satisfied, he stepped across the room to his new clothes. Not his usual style, but he was thankful he wouldn’t need to put his old things back on. They’d only remind him of better times.
He pulled on a pair of dark cargo jeans over his thermal leggings and slowly threaded a belt through his hunting knife's sheath. Over a grey jumper, he pulled on a thick hooded top and finished his new outfit off with a heavy brown canvas jacket. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he shuffled over to the water drums.
Like a young Ansell. He narrowed his eyes. “Hung, gutted, and staked!” he growled in his best Ansell voice as he swung an imaginary axe back and forth, then twirled and dropped to his knee, firing an imaginary shotgun. He sprang to his feet and tripped on a discarded shoe, stubbing his toe on a chair leg.
Stifling a groan, he stepped through to the clockface room and idly perused the table of Ansell’s possessions. Rafts of paper, at a glance just scribbles and doodles but on closer inspection represented the inner workings of a killer, fascinated him. It was meticulous – names, descriptions, patterns of movement for countless victims, and viable locations to steal his targets away to meet their ends. Jude shivered. The man hadn’t been lying when he said he stalked from the shadows.
He glanced up at the window over the bed. The snow was falling heavily now, with thick flakes billowing about the sky on a vicious, stiff wind. The sky was a foreboding grey, moving towards black as the night closed in. Nearly time to go, he thought, though he had expected Ansell back by now. A pang of nerves hit him as he realised he didn’t know where they were going, for how long, or if he’d even live to see Zuri again. What if Ansell was taking him somewhere to kill him?
No, why would he do that? Jude reasoned. He could have easily killed me by now. Why would he stitch me back together to open me up again?
Reassured, he took a breath and returned to his thoughts. He needed Ansell. He’s a professional at this. He'll find Marcus and help serve him what he’s owed. And it made sense to leave the city for a while if he was being hunted. Maybe after Marcus was dead, he could even talk him into helping get to Brunner. He doubted himself, even as he thought it.
The thud of boots ripped him from his thoughts as he heard the clang of metal at the door in the other room. He dashed through, drawing his hunting knife and glaring at the door. It sounded as though someone was scrabbling at the lock. As he took one step forward, the door flung open and Ansell staggered in. Shutting the door behind him, on heavy legs he rushed to the drums and threw his face into the warm water. He dropped the blanket around him to the floor as he turned towards Jude. Blood was seeping through his multiple layers of clothing and dripping to his feet.
“Are you ready?”
“I’m ready, but you clearly aren’t! What happened?”
“Been shot. It’s a flesh wound. I'll be fine. I don’t have what I need here to deal with it. Get your boots on.”
Jude scrabbled for his boots and tugged them on. Ansell disappeared into the clockface room and returned moments later, throwing a rucksack to Jude with his good arm.
“Put the bow in there as best you can. Sensible move wrapping it up. Here, take this” – he passed Jude a bundle of cloth – “but don’t open it. We don’t have time. It’s arrows.”
Jude rushed the bow and arrows into the bag. The ends of the bundles wouldn’t quite fit inside, so he allowed them to poke out.
“Listen carefully, I won't repeat myself. We need to cross the city. It’s dangerous enough at night, as well you know, but added to that, the entire City Guard is searching for us. We’ll move slowly and cautiously, not to draw attention to ourselves. If we find ourselves in trouble, we’ll run. You will stay close to me. Fighting is the last option, only if it’s life or death.” Ansell stared at Jude intently. “Understood?”
“Yes.” Jude paused momentarily. “What happened?”
For a second, Jude thought Ansell would erupt, but he quashed the fire in his bloodshot eyes. “I killed some guards. One of them was Brunner’s brother. As you would expect, they are hell-bent on catching me.”
“Good. I’m glad you killed him. Maybe Brunner can feel some of what I’m feeling.”
“I'm not proud of it. I don’t kill guards,” Ansell snapped. “I had no choice.”
“Why don’t you kill guards?”
“Too close to home.”
“You were a guard?”
“Not a guard like you know it.”
“So before The Panic then? Police or military?”
“Enough questions. Get ready.”
They made their final adjustments. Ansell selected some motorcycle gloves from his locker and pulled them on, grimacing as he moved his left hand. He replaced his snood over his face before dropping some spare clothes into his rucksack. Finally, he yanked a blanket from above the radiator. It looked thick and warm and well-made, sparing some tattered rips and holes.
“There’s another pair of gloves in the locker. Take them, and there’s a scarf in there as well.”
Jude obliged, remembering the bone-biting swirls of snow he had observed through the window earlier. The scarf was itchy on his newly stubbled neck but cosy enough. He tucked it inside his hooded top, being thorough to ensure there were no gaps where the cold could sneak through to his skin. The gloves were slightly too big, but he was glad to have them.
Ansell extinguished the fire burning under the drum of water and spun towards the door. “Let's go.”
Jude followed hastily out through the door onto a cold metal landing. As Ansell fitted the padlock, Jude looked down into darkness, the remnants of wooden stairs, once gnarly and broken, hung to the walls in places. Ansell pushed open the landing's only window, inviting a blast of cold air to occupy the room, then unfurled a makeshift rope ladder attached firmly to the window frame and threw it out into the snow.
He climbed out backwards with a grunt and disappeared from view as he lowered himself. Jude followed, backing out of the window into the cold dark. He pulled it shut behind him and began his descent on the ladder. Each rung he descended felt shakier than the last as he wondered how it had been possible for Ansell to get him there in the first place.
“How on earth did you get me up here?” he shouted over the howling wind.
Ansell looked up through the swirls of snow as he shouted back, “I strapped you to my back. It wasn’t so difficult, you’re lighter than you look!”
“Years of rations will do that to a man!”
He continued down until the ladder ended a few feet above the slanted roof of the main hall. Ansell had already dropped and slid down the roof to the gothic balustrade where he waited eagerly. Jude swallowed his nerves as he looked at the roof. It was treacherous, the harsh wind whipping up flurries of snow off the tiles into the night sky. The balustrade looked old…centuries old, he thought as he imagined himself ploughing through it at speed and falling to his doom.
“Hurry up! You’ll freeze up there!”
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With a deep breath, he released the ladder, crashing onto the tiles with a thud. He toppled down the slope in a flurry of snow, speed getting away from him. He grasped at the frozen tiles, unable to take a hold. Faster, he slid until he clattered the balustrade, his weight taking him over the side as the wind exploded from him. He clawed at the frozen roof, panicking for breath. His fingers slipped slowly until only two held him there. Then one. Then he was falling, the type of falling you only experience in a nightmare.
Ansell’s hand rifled over the side and snatched his jacket at the chest. His other hand clasped the balustrade, his blood leaking out of his jacket and freezing with the ice. He spat and breathed deeply before hefting him back over with a grunt.
“Idiot.”
“Oh shit…thought I was dead. Shit, Ansell. Thank you.”
“Get your head in the game. Keep up or I'll cut you loose…and I don’t mean loose as in free. I mean loose as in dead.”
“Yeah. Sorry,” Jude replied with a sigh.
Ansell clambered back up the tiles and dislodged the ladder, tucking it behind a turret before he was away on his toes across the roof. Even though walking wounded, he was impossibly agile for a big man, skipping across the tiles without using the balustrade as a handrail. Jude followed cautiously. Losing his footing more than once, he made slow and steady progress towards the far side of the roof, where Ansell was waiting for him once more.
“You’re too slow. We’re going to step over the balustrade and drop down to a ledge below. Then we’ll shimmy across to a window. That’s the way in. You follow?”
“I’m so sorry I’m too slow for you,” scoffed Jude. “It’s just I’ve never scaled a town hall covered in snow and ice in the dead of night before!” But Ansell was already on the ledge below and paying no attention.
Jude climbed over the balustrade quickly, almost slipping on a frozen patch, his gloved hands scrabbling to keep him steady. He dropped to the ledge, where he was grateful to feel Ansell’s strong hand grasp him and pull him in tight to the building. They shimmied across.
The ledge was only an inch wider than Jude’s boot, and the drop was sickening. The moon’s silver-blue hue pierced through the falling snow. It was just bright enough for them to see their destination at the end of the ledge. Ansell arrived first and opened the window by sliding a wickedly sharp Bowie knife under the frame and popping it before rolling in. Jude copied, delighted to be out of the wind. He quietly shut the window behind him and took a massive sigh of relief.
“That was intense.”
“That was nothing. Come on.” Ansell pushed on, unlocking another door, which led out to a similar landing to the one in the tower. Here the stairs were intact, though they were narrow, rotten, and had definitely seen better days. As they rushed down them, Jude became increasingly aware of the rise in temperature and the foul odour of sweat and musk.
“Those were access stairs,” whispered Ansell as they reached the bottom. He unlocked a thick padlock and slid free a chain, then pushed a slight gap into a heavy metal door and peeped out. “Through this door and around the corner is a landing and a wide set of stone stairs sweeping down to the main hall. Once we step out of here, we are vagrants seeking a corner to settle in for the night. Act accordingly.”
He waited impatiently for a lull in the sound of footfalls on the landing through the door until, at last, he pushed it just enough to squeeze through. Jude followed. He rounded the corner to be enveloped by people.
The landing was awash with movement, people milling about in front of tents and spinning spits over small fires. Smoke filled the hot air as the scent of cooking meat, carried on the breeze, snuck through gaps in the ancient window frames. A narrow path cut jagged through the camp, and Jude shuffled along it, imitating Ansell’s weary lead. No one so much as looked at them, all far too preoccupied with their own tragic matters.
Once across the landing, they reached the wide stone stairs. They were magnificent. Jude stared at the regal heroes depicted on the tattered tapestries adorning the walls. He imagined them striding down the stairs to celebrate a glorious victory in the main hall. But now the stairs were awash with addicts, huddled close on steps, nodding in and out of consciousness, their needles littering every inch of the floor. He continued down, weaving through the bodies until he finally reached the great hall.
The room itself was breathtaking. Jude almost gasped and marvelled at it, though he remembered quickly enough he was supposed to be blending in. He continued to shuffle through. Remaining hunched over, he kept close to Ansell, who would nod at vagrants and Crocheads here and there. They all seemed to accept him for the part he was portraying.
Jude risked a glance up. Exquisite stone pillars, towering and majestic, lorded above the squalor beneath them like kings amongst peasants. They held the arched ceilings aloft with their infinite power. Intricate chandeliers hung in the air, their lights long since extinguished, though their grandeur remained for all to see. A travesty that none looked. Tall windows of coloured glass presided over the squats in the belly of the hall, distorting the ghostly grey light of the moon outside and casting menacing shadows around the mighty walls.
In the centre of the hall, which Jude was closing in on quickly, a huge open fire blazed up from what seemed to be the disconnected bed of a pickup truck. It sat upon the mosaic tiled floor, filled with pallets and the litter from the squats. Crowds of people were jostling for position near to it. The heat was so intense Jude imagined the people at the front would find themselves cooked through by morning.
They skirted around the perimeter of the crowd, continuing on through the tents and makeshift shacks. The squalor was worse here than anywhere else Jude had been in the city. People wallowed on the ground wherever there was a space. Used needles, stale blood, and putrid water lined the floors.
Sadness threatened to take him as he saw a young woman, no older than himself, propped up against a tattered old mattress folded against the wall. A syringe jabbed into her exposed groin. Her face would have been pretty once, he thought as he winced at the scales and sores creeping from her neck, up her jaw, and onto her cheek. A man, old enough to be her grandfather, draped greedily across her, jeans bunched at his ankles. He was snoring loudly, like a fat old pig, though the girl was unresponsive to the noise. Anger struck him. He stopped in his tracks and noticed his clenched fists pulsing in his pockets. He stepped towards them but halted. His blood boiling, he turned and rushed away after Ansell.
Just another Crochead. I don’t know her – or him. She might have deserved her fate. Can’t help everyone in this cesspool of a city, he thought as he moved on.
The grand double doors of the great hall loomed ahead, the last barrier between the hot stench and the fresh freezing air of the outside. Jude was anxious to get there and be free of the overwhelming poverty surrounding him. He rounded the last line of tents and was about to step into a clearing between the crowds and the door when he jolted backwards. The wind escaped his lungs as he whooshed back, yanked by his bag straps that were pulled tightly around his shoulders. He heard the zip rip open as he slipped and staggered, stumbling to the floor. He sprang quickly to his feet and faced his attacker.
“What’s this?” asked a skinny man with a sharp face. His ratty features were draped in a waxy sheen, and oozing black scales bathed in the moonlight that was pouring through the windows. He was holding the grey woollen bundle bound with a leather strip.
“Give it back now!” shouted Jude as he pounced, snatching at the bundle. His fingers clasped a corner of the blanket, but the ratty man pulled it from his grasp. The black flight of an arrow slipped out, raising a hungry smile on the thief's face.
“Arrows!” he exclaimed. “What’s it worth to you?”
“What is your life worth to you, maggot?” asked Ansell, his voice low as he stepped between Jude and the thief.
The thief looked to back away, but his legs trembled, rooted to the spot. “My life isn’t worth as much as a bundle of arrows, mister,” he stammered.
Jude thought Ansell would erupt. He could see his arm moving under the blanket and knew what would happen next. The thief was about to be on the receiving end of a shotgun shell. Jude reached out, squeezing Ansell’s wrist through the blanket draped around him. He could feel the tension radiating through the muscles in his forearm. Glancing up, he noticed his right eye twitching, and the bloodshot-red colour had deepened.
“It’s ok,” whispered Jude. “No fighting, not unless it’s life or death. You said it.”
“You will remove your hand immediately, or you will lose it.”
Jude released the wrist as though it was on fire. He stepped back and watched, his face contorted to a grimace and braced for the blast of a shot. Ansell’s arm snatched out from under the blanket. Jude expected blood, but surprised, he saw not a shotgun, only the dull glint of two copper coins.
“I am not a reasonable man,” Ansell snarled. Jude could tell he was drawing on every fibre of restraint that he possessed as he continued. “On another day, you would be dead by now. Today, you are lucky. Take a coin as payment for the bundle you have stolen. Take a second coin to forget about what you have seen.” As he spoke, he drew back the blanket just enough to expose the butt of his shotgun. “There will be no negotiation.”
“N-n-no, mister, none needed! Thank you, mister! I won’t tell a soul, I swear…on…yes, I know! On my children’s eyes.” The thief threw his hand out immediately, as if under a spell, and passed the bundle back to Jude. His fingers shook violently as he curled them around the copper coins. He stood frozen to the spot under Ansell’s gaze.
Ansell swung away from him and made towards the door. It was as though the spell snapped, and the thief scurried back and dropped to the floor in the mouth of the nearest tent.
Jude rushed past Ansell towards the doors, furious at the man and his damned harshness. He opened his mouth to tell him what he thought, but the giant double doors flung open and blasted him with an icy gust that stole his breath. Snow and mist blustered into the room.
Men of the City Guard stormed in on the wind, forming two lines leading from the door towards the rows of tents. Jude once more felt his feet slip out from under him, this time under the weight of Ansell, who tackled him to the ground and dragged him back towards the tents.
“Quiet.”
Panic erupted in the slum. All over, beggars, Crocheads, vagrants, and children scurried and scrambled to hide their taxable contraband. People dove into tents, backed into corners, and dropped to the floor. An uneasy hush settled. Somewhere, a baby cried. A dog whimpered over a fire. Hundreds of eyes watched the guards.
“Be calm. Be natural,” Ansell ordered. He shuffled on his behind into the mouth of an empty tent. He bowed his head to the floor and floated his gloved hands over a small open fire flickering in front of the tent. Jude sat alongside, eyes down, fiddling nervously with a twig laying near to the fire. He wrote "Zuri" in the dust and wiped it away. Then he wrote it again.
The thud of boots sounded as a hatchet-faced man with cruel eyes marched through the centre of the guards. Jude had never seen anyone as outwardly frightening as Ansell in his entire life, but this man came close. There was an air of malice about him. Even his own men seemed on edge as he drifted by them. Whispers started near the doors, then passed back row by row.
“Keep your head, Jude. Now is not the time, I can assure you. Trust me on this,” Ansell whispered, his tone a new one to Jude. He almost sounded concerned.
“What are you talking about?”
Before Ansell could reply, the hatchet-faced man spoke. His voice was sharp and powerful, and it sliced through the air like a knife. “For those who do not know me, I am Henry Brunner, Captain of the Guard.”
Jude flushed. The scar on his forehead began to ache and grow hot, causing his eyes to blink tightly shut. He dared not open them and look upon the man who had executed his friend, for despite the rage bubbling inside of him, he knew he could not afford to act now. He felt a firm hand on his knee and looked left to Ansell.
“Get off me, or you’ll lose your hand at the wrist.” He intended it as harsh and menacing, but it sounded petulant and far less intimidating than when Ansell had said it. He bowed his head and smirked, and the tension in him eased slightly as Captain Brunner continued.
“Guards!” With a shout, his men immediately fanned out, walking into the slums. “My guards will move amongst you. We are searching for two men. One has bright blue eyes and is carrying a gunshot wound to his left shoulder. The other is a blond-haired archer from The Gardens.” He paused briefly, allowing his words to hang in the air. “There is a reward. Ten notes to anyone providing information that leads to their capture.”
The room erupted as chatter and shouting echoed about the tents and campfires. Ten notes was a small fortune, and every person present was desperate to earn it. Pockets of fighting broke out, and men and women tore clothes off anyone with blue eyes, searching for the gunshot wound. Ansell remained still, eyes down, head bowed.
“Captain Brunner!”
Ansell glanced up and saw the ratty-faced thief rising to his feet and rushing towards the captain. The man shot a nervous look at Ansell, licking his lips and wiping his waxy brow. He was going to give him up. No question.
“Life or death, Jude. Be ready to run.”
The thief was nearly upon Captain Brunner when Ansell sprang up. The blanket about his shoulders dropped to his feet, exposing his blood-soaked jacket. His sawn-off snaked up, and the dreadful boom of shot rang out as he blew a hole through the chest of the ratty-faced thief. He launched from his feet through the air and landed with a sickening crunch on the tiled floor.
With blistering speed, Ansell threw his arm up to the ceiling, blasting off a second shot, and it smashed into one of the mighty chandeliers. Glass shattered and rained down on Captain Brunner, a beautiful and deadly downpour of kaleidoscopic shards lit by shafts of moonlight.
The heavy metal frame clattered the massive fire, and flames spread through the tents like wildfire assaulting dry brush. Billows of thick, black smoke. Coughs and splutters and screams. Captain Brunner writhed on the floor. Scraps of debris and glass pressed him down, his face awash with blood seeping from his gashed head. Chaos erupted into sounds of gunshot and breaking glass and the whooshing of open flame. People scattered, clambering over each other, away from the falling debris and the nightmare man with the shotgun.
“Run!” Ansell cried as he dragged a shocked Jude to his feet. Jude obliged, sprinting through the double doors and out into the breathless black night.