08 A Little Hatred: Book One (The Age of Madness)

She let go of her sword and ran, every muscle aching now, her lungs on fire. She snatched a look back. Figures in the murk, huge, distorted. Whoops and laughter, like huntsmen after a fox. A great shape loomed ahead, a monster with a thousand bristling limbs, and she skittered to a halt. A barricade, thrown up across the street, the limbs the legs of chairs, and desks, and tangled timbers. A man stood on it. A huge man with hardly any neck, hair clipped to stubble, features hidden but for lenses flashing orange, the new kind, mounted in thin wire, tiny on his heavy, stubbled face.

‘Help me!’ Holding out her bloody hand, her voice a desperate squeak. ‘I’m begging you!’

He folded Savine’s wrist in an irresistible grip. For a terrible moment, she wondered if she had made the worst mistake of her life.

He hoisted her effortlessly up beside him. She saw torch flames bobbing, could hardly breathe for fear, hardly move for it. She shrank down trembling behind a broken chest of drawers, clung to a chair leg.

Her pursuers slowed as they came close. Six of them, breathing hard from their run, sticks and clubs and torches in their clenched fists, and at the front the tall one swaggered forward, tall hat skewed at a rakish angle.

‘That’s far enough,’ said the big man. A calm voice, very deep, very slow. How could he be calm? How could anyone be calm ever again?

‘Nice wall you’ve built,’ said Tall Hat, sneer across a sweat-beaded, pockmarked face, his eyes wild, wide, burning with the reflected fire of his torch as he held it high.

‘Thanks,’ said the big man, ‘but I’ll ask you to admire it from a distance.’ He unhooked his lenses from his ears and ever so carefully folded them. ‘I’ll ask nicely.’ He rubbed at the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. ‘But I’ll only ask once.’

‘Can’t.’ Tall Hat gave a big grin. ‘You’ve got something of ours.’

The big man pushed his folded lenses into Savine’s limp hand and gently curled her fingers shut around them. He sounded almost sad. ‘Believe me, there’s naught here you want.’

‘Give her up!’ barked Tall Hat, voice turned suddenly so sharp, Savine flinched at it.

The big man hopped down from the barricade and walked forward, not worried, not hurried. Savine could hardly understand what he was doing.

Tall Hat had his doubts, too. He raised his torch. ‘I’m not scared o’—’

The big man darted at him, caught the swinging torch on his shoulder and shrugged it off in a shower of sparks. His fist sank into Tall Hat’s side, a short, quick blow, but Savine heard the thud of it, felt the force of it. It folded Tall Hat over and left him tottering.

The big man took him by the coat and jerked him off his feet. Lifted him high, as if he was no more than a sack of rags, then flung him down on the cobbles so hard his hat bounced off.

He gave a shuddering groan, stretched out a quivering hand, and the big man calmly lifted his big boot and stomped his face into the road.

Savine stared, hardly breathing.

The big man looked up at Tall Hat’s companions, brushing a few embers from his shoulder. They stood in a shocked half-circle. Five men, but none of them had moved the whole time.

‘We can have him,’ said one, though he sounded far from certain. He licked his lips, took a hesitant step forward.

‘Ah.’ A second man had climbed up onto the barricade. Or maybe he’d been there all along, so still Savine hadn’t noticed. A stringy man with a drooping moustache. He held a loaded flatbow, something drawn on the back of the hand on the trigger. Tattooed. ‘Ah, I said.’ He eased towards them, pointing the bow with more intent, head of the bolt gleaming. ‘Don’t you bastards understand fucking ah?’

It seemed they did. They began to retreat. The one who’d worn the hat gave a faint gurgle. One of them dragged him up, head lolling, his face a mass of black blood.

‘Aye!’ shouted the stringy man, lowering his flatbow as they disappeared into the sweltering night. ‘And don’t come back!’ He wiped his sweaty forehead with his tattooed hand as his companion clambered back onto the barricade. ‘Damn it, Bull, this wasn’t part o’ the plan.’

Bull was an apt name for the big man. He frowned at Savine, and she cringed away until her back hit a wall. ‘Well,’ he said, wincing as he rubbed at his knuckles, ‘you know what happens to plans when the fighting starts.’

‘Fucking Burners!’ snarled the bowman, loosening his string and slipping out the bolt with a practised air. ‘Bastards have gone mad. Just want to burn everything!’

‘That’s why they call ’em Burners, Sarlby.’ There was a woman there, too. A girl with a tough, bony face, squatting down beside Savine, all business.

‘She hurt?’ asked Broad.

‘I think just scared, mostly.’ Savine felt her hand prised open, and the girl took the lenses out and offered them up. ‘Who could blame her for that?’ Savine realised who she was. The Vallimirs’ maid. What had been her name? Dinner on the hill felt like a thousand years ago. May. May Broad.