Stealing Into Winter

Stealing into Winter

Book One of Shadow in the Storm

GRAEME K. TALBOYS

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

Copyright © Graeme K. Talboys 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015.

Cover photographs © iStockphoto.com (figure); Shutterstock.com (all other images)

Graeme K. Talboys asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-810355-2

Version: 2015-06-16

For Barbara

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE: City

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

PART TWO: Desert

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

PART THREE: Mountains

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

About the Author

About the Publisher

PART ONE

Chapter One

The wall opposite the door exploded. Thick, stale dust billowed into the dark cell. Particles of shattered stone ricocheted about the confined space, and lumps of rubble spilled in noisy profusion across the stone floor, tipping the bed on its side. Fast asleep at the time, Jeniche found herself sprawling in the debris, confused and in pain. Grit found its way into her mouth and she spat. Dust settled into her eyes and tears laid grimy tracks down the hollows of her dark cheeks.

She pushed herself into a sitting position while stones and chunks of mud brick cascaded from her hair and clothes, more dust drifting into the air. Resisting the temptation to rub her eyes, she blinked and winced, blinked again. And then began to cough as the pervasive dust caught the back of her throat.

Hunched in the deep gloom with her eyes streaming, still not understanding what had happened, she hacked until her lungs hurt. Perhaps it had been an earthquake. She had heard such things happened in Makamba now and then, but there had not been one in all the years since she had settled there. For the moment, as she sat waiting for the air to clear enough for light to filter through the barred window in the door, it was all she could think of by way of an explanation. Only when she had fallen silent, drawing cautious breaths of still dusty air through her nose, did she begin to hear faint, distant sounds.

They reached her through thick walls, long corridors, and many locked doors; through heaps of shattered masonry and thick dust. Disturbing sounds that filtered into her cell. Shouts. Screams. Faint exhalations, like sudden gusts of wind, followed by crushing thuds that made the ground tremble. Perhaps not an earthquake after all. She listened for anything closer, but just beyond her prison door, all was silent.

Feeling about her legs, she pushed lumps of crumbling mud brick away from her bruised shins and pulled herself upright. Grit cascaded to the floor stirring more dust into the air. She listened again, expectant, tense; the smell of fear mingling with the stale odour of sun-baked clay. Even the distant noise had subsided.

Placing her bare feet with care, she picked her way across the dark space to the metal door. Faint light showed through the iron bars at the small window. From a few paces back, she went up onto the tips of her toes. There was little to see. Blinking away the fog of tears, she stepped forward again.

The area beyond the door was filled with a haze of fine dust, illuminated by the pale flame of a lamp on the far side. Apart from that, the room seemed unchanged. A table. An arched entrance to a corridor at the far end. Rows of cell doors. In the window of one, large hands appeared, grasping the bars. She heard a heavy metallic rattle and tried the same with her own door, but it seemed as firmly locked as ever.

Only then did it occur to her in all the confusion that if the wall had collapsed…

Peering back into the gloom, she surveyed the damage. The splintered remains of her bed poked out at odd angles from a landslide of rough bricks and fragments of masonry. She looked at it, calculating. Somewhere beneath it was a lump of hard bread she had been saving, as well as her sandals. All she managed to retrieve was the thin blanket.

Beyond, the wall seemed intact, mostly coarse bricks and cheap mortar. The corner furthest from the bed bulged near the ceiling, as if something had hit it from outside, causing the inner section of wall to collapse. But bulge was all it did. There was no way through to the outside and the wall did not move when she pushed against it.

With a sigh, she stepped away, pulling the blanket round her shoulders. The sighing sound continued, even after she had expelled the air from her lungs. Became a rushing whistle. That grew louder.

Swearing in the dust-filled darkness, spitting more grit, and counting more bruises, Jeniche clambered out from under fresh debris. Something sharp snagged on her tunic and she pulled herself free. Dazed again, it was several long moments before she noticed that it was brighter. That the door to her cell hung at a crazy angle from just one hinge.

Once she noticed, she did not hesitate. The gap was small, but she was used to that. Head first, twisting part way and leaving the blanket behind, she squirmed out into the room beyond and was back on her feet in an instant. Wiping grit from her soles with a quick flick of her fingertips, she moved across the stone floor to the entrance to the corridor and peered into the dust-filled gloom. At the far end, lantern held high, a prison guard approached with a corner of his keffiyeh held across his mouth and nose. She dodged back, wondering if she could get past him.

Instinct made her go for height and she climbed on the table where the guards placed the food before pushing it through the feeding slots. Crouching ready to leap, she heard another loud crash and, as she fell, was astonished to see the guard expelled from the corridor into the room.

He hit the wall hard, his lantern crashing to the floor. The flame guttered, dust in the oil. From the floor, Jeniche watched the guard for a moment, but he was either unconscious or dead. Nothing she could do.

‘Keys.’

The hoarse voice came from the cell where those large, pale hands once more gripped the bars.

‘Get his keys and let me out.’

Jeniche was many things. A thief mostly. With standards. A liar when needed. Sometimes she was unlucky. This was, after all, a prison that was collapsing around her ears. And she was young. But stupid, she was not. And there was no way she was going to release the evil hulk on the other side of that locked door – a psychopathic rapist due for public execution.

She made a rude gesture in his direction before retrieving the keys from the unmoving body of the guard. A stream of lurid insults and threats poured from the darkness of the cell and the door rattled loudly. Jeniche retrieved her blanket, wrapped it round her shoulders, told the rapist in explicit and colourful terms what he could do to himself in the confines of his firmly locked cell, and stepped toward the corridor and freedom.

Freedom was not forthcoming. Instead, there was another loud crash and more debris poured into the space. Jeniche felt the floor tilt and fell, rolling against a wall hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. She lay gasping for air that was saturated with stale dust, wanting to scream with frustration and fear.

Silence settled as the air began to clear. And in the darkness, she could see a pale, shimmering speck. Blinking, she looked again through more tears. A patch of different darkness. Filled with stars.

With hurried movements, she began pulling the bits of shattered brick and broken wood off her legs, wiggling her toes to check that nothing was badly damaged. Everything seemed to be working, but her left foot was trapped at the ankle. She leaned forward, feeling into the rubble and finding what must be the remains of the table, pinned firmly by large lumps of masonry that lay just out of reach.

A tear rolled free and she made herself calm down, scenting the night air as it reached tentative fingers of freshness into the fusty interior. Distant voices, shouting; other sounds she could not identify wove a picture of chaos. If she could only free her foot…

Shuffling forward, she began to work again at moving the wreckage. Swift movements, quiet so as to avoid attracting anyone’s attention. Her foot moved. If she could just twist it to the left, she thought, or maybe bend her knee, just so. And as she contorted herself, feeling freedom edge closer, there came a grating noise from behind her, followed by an enormous metallic crash.

A dark shape loomed between Jeniche and the patch of starry sky. She pulled again at her foot as the escaped rapist leaned in close.

‘So, I can go fuck myself, can I?’

A seemingly endless silence followed in which Jeniche saw the anger on his face turn to puzzlement and then an evil sneer. She looked down and realized she had lost the blanket again and that her tunic was gaping open, revealing far too much.

‘How about,’ grunted the hoarse voice, close to her face, ‘I fuck you, instead.’

A hand groped its way to her leg.

Her own hands clawed at the stony rubbish as the broken table was pulled from her trapped foot and she was dragged across the floor. Sour, urgent breath hissed into her face and she saw his pale, ravenous face in front of hers as her fingers gripped something sharp. Her feet were trapped again as he sat on her legs. Hands fumbled with her tunic.

Frustration, anger, fear, and a blind desire to hurt powered the swing of her arm. He saw it coming and moved his head back. He didn’t move quickly enough. The torn metal base of the guard’s lantern caught his nose and ripped it from his face.

Jeniche could hear him screaming as she scrambled up the loose scree of brickwork and stone toward the patch of sky. She could hear him screaming above the shouts that were louder now she was outside. Even when she climbed stone stairs up out of the courtyard and found herself on a flat roof, she could hear his howling. But the immediate and very personal threat he posed faded as she looked around and saw the city of Makamba on fire.

For long, precious moments she ran from edge to edge of the roof, turning, looking, and trying to understand. In the darkness above her, things she could not see whistled past and tore into buildings in the Citadel and beyond, throwing debris in all directions. Arrows trailing flame arced in the night, finding dirt and oblivion, awnings and wood piles, jars of oil, flesh.

All through the Citadel, across the docks, up along the great ridge of the Old City, and beyond to richer enclaves, buildings burned. Flames leapt and roared, casting angry light into the dark parts of the city. And everywhere she looked, people ran; shouting, crying, and brandishing buckets and weapons.

Arrows fell with a clatter onto the roof where she stood, waking her from the distant nightmare. Wasting no more time, she ran and leapt the narrow gap between buildings onto a shallow-pitched pantile roof. The clay tiles clattered beneath her bare feet as she went up over the ridge and down the other side, her eyes trying to make sense of the unfamiliar roofscape as flame-shadows danced.

Running along the edge of the roof, she looked down to the ground three floors below. The only way out of the Citadel was through one of the gates, and she knew she needed to get there quickly. There had been a lot of people down on the river front, pouring off barges. She doubted they were ships’ crew.

At the corner of the building was a buttress. Without stopping to think about how narrow it was, she slipped over the side and shinned down, rolling into a small pool of shadow when she hit the ground, a yelp of pain bitten off behind tight clenched lips.

In the chaos, she took a moment to massage her stubbed toes and survey the scene. The Citadel did not have a complex layout, but it was haphazard, having evolved from the original, walled trading settlement. With all the confusion and the need to look as if she belonged, she hobbled across to a main path where a bucket chain had been formed. As one bucket passed, she slipped across, grabbed another that had been dropped and headed toward the small customs house; found herself being jostled toward the main gate just as she had hoped.

Torches flared in great iron brackets, lighting the main parade ground and gateway. The space was filled with men and horses and, to her astonishment, the main gates seemed wide open. For a moment she thought it was too late, that the Citadel had fallen, but then she saw that the great press of men were members of the city guard, newly arrived. And she also saw that the heavy gates were now slowly moving, blocking her only way out.

A horse stepped sideways and pushed her against a wall before its rider calmed it. Used to the great beasts, she waited anxious seconds so as not to startle it again by dashing off. And then, with one eye on the gates and the other on the melee of dismounting soldiers, she began to weave her way across the parade ground. Dodging booted feet and pikestaffs, bumped and jostled, she pushed her way to the ever-narrowing gap, tripping as a clear run opened up in front of her.

Hauled to her feet by a rough hand grasping her tunic, she turned ready to fight.

‘Get out, lad,’ said the soldier, not looking properly and making a mistake she was used to and often exploited. He marched her across to the gatehouse. ‘No place for you here,’ he added and pushed her out into the street. The gates slammed loudly behind her and she heard the first of the great locking bars fall into place.

‘May your gods protect you,’ she called as loudly as she could. And then ran off into the mayhem in the streets of the Old City.

Chapter Two

The Citadel, a sheer-sided mud-brick fort perched on the steep hillside, had long ago become the centre of protection for the Old City and the docks. Mostly the docks. Which was why it had been maintained through the centuries. The Old City on the other hand, as old parts of cities do, had degenerated to a maze of tiny streets, small markets, and battered-looking houses where the poorest and hardest-working lived. Jeniche loved it. It was like a gigantic, sprawling family house, full of squabbling, loving, cooking, eating, reeking humanity, replete with secret places. Even though she knew no one who lived there, she always felt as if she belonged.

Tonight, it was different. Instead of a homely anarchy, the chaos of the place was driven by fear. The noise was confusing. Looks were hostile. She felt doors being closed against strangers. And all the time arrows fell and buildings burst and collapsed.

After a brief moment to draw breath, she decided the best thing to do would be to get back up into the main part of Makamba, retrieve her stash from her hideaway in the stables and head out of the city. Thieving was precarious at the best of times, more so since taking that ill-starred amulet, as she had discovered. In a city crawling with soldiers, it could easily prove fatal.

As she began to make her way uphill, moving from alley to alley and passage to passage, climbing walls, darting through cellars, the tone of the noise about her changed. She tried to place it and decided that the invaders must have by-passed the Citadel and attempted to breach the Old City defences.

Spurred on, she went faster, emerging onto the main street that ran between the docks and the newer parts of the city at the top of the hill. And stopped short.

A great length of the street seemed to be roofed with dancing fire, blazing cinders dropping to the cobbles, drifting in the warm breeze. Flags and bunting for the festival marking the visit of the God-King of the Tunduri people, flamed in the night. Paints and dyes lent their colour to the flames, blues and greens, yellows and reds, flickering and crackling.

The ropes on one great banner gave way and the whole thing fell, writhing, turning like a dying picture-book dragon. It hit the street with a whumph and scattered fragments of blazing material in all directions. Women emerged from houses and shops with brooms to beat it out.

Jeniche dodged on along the street, burning her feet on cinders, brushing them from her short hair as she ran. It seemed like a lifetime since she had wandered down this hill just three days ago, treating herself to sweetmeats and following the crowds out over the bridge and along the Great North Road to the complex of caves, hoping to catch a glimpse of the God-King of Tundur. Three endless days spent pacing that cell and listening to the ravings of the rapist. She shivered, dodging as a length of charred bunting fell in front of her.

The Tunduri had known how to enjoy themselves, even on a lengthy pilgrimage, but she still had no idea why there were ancient giant images of the first Tunduri God-King carved into the rock face by Makamba. Tundur, the Land of Winter, was many hundreds of miles away to the north, high in the mountains. She had asked some of the monks and nuns, but they probably hadn’t understood her, had simply smiled and given her flowers and bread. She’d bet that bread against her little bag of winnings that right now they were all heading north as fast as their feet could carry them, trundling their God-King in that huge, decorated wagon along the dusty roads to the north.

She was wondering, not for the first time, what the God-King would look like when her feet tangled themselves against something soft and heavy and she went down hard against a fresh pile of rubble, adding more bruises to her already extensive collection. A complex stench of rotting food, stale sweat, vomit, and cheap wine wafted over her and made her retch.

Peering into the gloom of a narrow alley, darkening as the last of the flags became drifting fragments of charred cloth, she could make out the dim shape of a body. Old boots, one with a missing heel, torn and no doubt dirty trousers. She didn’t want to speculate on the rest. Instead, she crawled into the darkness and leaned against the opposite wall, her arms around her knees. There would be plenty more like this one, she thought, and rested a moment.

‘Wha-oooh-err-eurgh.’

The emetic wailing startled Jeniche and she jerked back, banging her head on the wall. She lashed out, kicking at the body.

Another groan issued from the dark and the legs moved. ‘Whadjer wanna do that for?’

‘You frightened me and I’ve had enough of being frightened.’

‘What you frightened of? S’just a carnival.’

‘We’re being invaded,’ she hissed, peering out and down the main street which was now dark and quiet.

‘S’only nunks and muns.’ There was a pause. ‘Muns and nunks.’ Another pause. ‘Don’t feel very…’

At the sound of more vomiting, Jeniche stood and stepped back out onto the main thoroughfare. The sharp, tarry smell of burning rope and painted cloth came as a relief.

Firecrackers sounded at the bottom end of the Old City near the docks. A warehouse on fire, she thought, as she scurried on up the hill. When she reached the top, she paused on the edge of the old market square to look back down. Fires burned fiercely by the riverside and small, dark shapes could be seen flitting back and forth.

A shadow further up the hill seemed to move and she flattened herself back against the nearest wall before sliding round the edge of the square.

As she expected, the main gates in the Old City wall had been closed. It was the first time she had ever seen them like this. Even in the dark of night, she could see they wouldn’t last long; although if the dock gates burned down, the main gates would be all but redundant.

Standing on the narrow, unprotected stone bridge above the gates were several guards. Not wanting to test how jumpy they might be, Jeniche turned into a side street that ran parallel with the wall and looked for her own familiar route out of the Old City.

A faint smell of soot and smoke hung in the cool air of the cellar when Jeniche woke. She lay for a while, listening, sorting memory from dream. When she was fully awake, she moved to the door and edged it open. Early morning light filled the alley and lit the steps in front of her. She had slept for just a few hours.

Still moving with caution, she made her way to the street and peered out. This part of Makamba seemed untouched by the events of the previous night. Had it not been for the group of pale, fair-haired soldiers standing restless at the junction with the main street, turning back people with carts and barrows, she would have been tempted to think it all a nightmare. That and the collection of bruises. And the filthy, torn prison clothes. And her empty belly grumbling about breakfast and one or two other missed meals.