The last mile was always the longest.
Drag, step, drag, step, breathe in, step step drag. One foot in front of the other, body sinking to the earth under the pain and the aches and the slow soft searing heat of the Other Sun.
My left leg felt like broken stones, my lungs ached, my body sweltered inside its armour, but my head had never been clearer, my grip never firmer on the cattle prod that was serving time as a walking stick – bent and burnt out after an encounter with a metal vest. This, with the mind burning bright as the body dropped away, was how it always was after a holy quest. The journey had been harsh, the foes fierce, but the Terminal was in sight now, the big black hole in the ground that was home. It was going to be fine.
I collapsed within sight of the entrance, I was told later. The light reflecting from the one piece of my armour that still shone caught the eye of a labourer as he futilely scavenged for leftover metal scraps across the street in a building that had been picked clean when his mother was young. By little things we are saved, and of course, by the grace of the Lord Longsteel. At Its word I was tended to, splinted, cleaned, and repaired, and before three days were over I knelt before It in audience, in Its tunnels at the heart of the Terminal, between the two rails that were Its path.
I took care to hold my face in profile for one of the glittering eyes of the security cameras. Lord Longsteel was many things, and one of them was deaf – no, not deaf; numb to sound. “Your knight-errant has returned, my Lord. I have travelled to the rubble of the far west and spoken with the people of the railyards. Their lords respect our treaty and send their regards to you as kin.”
The rails under my feet vibrated slow-fast-slow. Lord Longsteel was pleased.
“I have travelled to the waters of the far south. The people of the waters are still missing, and they show no sign of having returned. Where their lords have taken them, I cannot say.
Slow-slow. Lord Longsteel accepted this.
“I have travelled to the heights of the far east. The lords of the air still hold those places firm, and their subjects have destroyed almost all passage to the ground. They still descend to hunt intruders, and it was there that my leg was shattered as I escaped.”
A single rumble. Lord Longsteel was not pleased.
“I was pursued by air as I retreated here. Lord Vtol, I believe. It hunted me for some days, but I lost it in the crumbled ways, by the debris of the banking skyscrapers.” I lowered my eyes. “I regret to say this, Lord, but I was unsuccessful in my search in all places it took me. Your thief is still missing.”
Silence. And then a long, low rumble of rage creaking its way across the ancient steel rails, growing and rattling across the cracks in the concrete walls, turning into a roar of anger.
I felt no fear. If the Lord wished me dead, it was just and I would be pleased to make amends in such a way. Even if my duty were to falter, unlike as it could be, my end would be utterly unpreventable and therefore worthy of no real thought or consideration.
“I have not searched the north, Lord,” I said.
Silence again.
“It is deadly, that I know. But I am prepared to risk it. And there is still time if the thief has fled by that path – he will be slow, cautious. I will not.”
I fell silent now, for the Lord was speaking – not mere emotive expressions now, but plans, instructions. A complex rhythm of reverberations and echoes, spilling over one another and roiling across the narrow depths of Its tunnels. Orders. Precise directions, carved out of Its memories and ancient schematics and prehistoric graffiti.
Synopsized:
Go here.
Kill him.
Bring that.
I rose in obedience, and nearly stumbled. “A final boon, Lord… might I be healed? I cannot travel any distance on this leg.”
Acquiescence. Power would be gifted.
I knelt again – carefully – between the two rails that made the path of Lord Longsteel, and I grasped the Third Rail in my hands.
There was no sensation, of course. I could tell my teeth had nearly fused together, that my hair was crackling and jerking away from my body, that my muscles were twisting and tangling. But there was no feedback, no feeling. Only current that mends, that tears broken bone into place and fuses it solid. Power from the grid, invoked down through the body of Lord Longsteel, through Its heart, and from that, the Other Sun.
Go here.
Kill him.
Bring that.
I nodded. And I left.
My armour was still battered. Plates were damaged, cushioning torn, the helmet still had a single massive dent in it just above the right eye where a lucky shot from lord Vtol had nearly done for me as I cowered behind a shoddy old wall in the crumbled ways. I left it behind, along with the shredded mess that had held my left leg together. What was left was mostly functional, and at least it was clean. My cattle prod was recharged from the Third Rail itself, its grip duct-taped and the whole returned to me.
Five days of supplies were in my backpack, taken from the hands of a cringing labourer. They would be sufficient for a week if I was careful.
The first day was quiet. Peaceful. All morning I walked the dark tunnels that led outwards from the Terminal, a wandering, wavering grid long since broken to smithereens by the chaos that had come after the Other Sun arrived. Come high noon I emerged from beneath the dirt in a cloud of broken rubble, and from then on I walked and ran and crawled through the gutters of the levelled blocks that marked the wide flat around the Terminal, each emptied of useful objects for decades and more, scavenged dry by two generations of scavengers that laboured for Lord Longsteel.
The second day took me farther, into the fringes of the northern boxtowns. Shells of thin, dirty metal stacked high to form uneven warehouses, bulky shipping centres, hollow factories. All would’ve been ugly even in their prime; nowadays, they were barely standing. Many sported holes in their sides, great gashes carved by the lumbering forms of rogue trucks and SUVs. What inhabited those creatures were no lords. Animals. Dangerous, vicious, unpredictable, but stupid. I gave the streets a wide berth and kept quiet, took care to leave no footsteps to mar the countless tread-marks that spilled over the street.
Two more days.
The sky drifted by, sometimes dark, sometimes light, always with the thin red light of the Other Sun there just above the horizon, circling clockwise, never dipping, never rising. Those that live on it, they don’t sleep, don’t wake. Just are. It kept me on edge, and I breathed a good sigh of relief on the fifth day, when I walked out of the maze of streets-turned-side-streets and into the searing sun of a field of debris large enough to swallow the Terminal and everything else in it, broken concrete and steel as far as the eye could reach. And far away out there, small but still managing to loom, was a dark silhouette.
Now I just had to make it there. And find some food along the way. That would be nice.
There was a sound. My prod was in my hands and my eyes were moving before I even recognized it: a whimper. Muffled, adult, female. “Come out,” I said.
Silence.
“I heard you there. You can come out, or I can find you. And if I have to find you, I will be displeased.”
Silence. Then: “here. Over here. In the hole.”
I tracked the voice over a small hill of debris and found it to be speaking truth: a pit bored into the ground, an exposed basement minus the structure above it. At its bottom sat an old woman, older than any I’d ever seen – her hair had gone all grey, her faces was a mass of wrinkles so deep they looked like knife cuts. Foggy grey eyes peered out at me in dull-witted terror.
“You’re one of them knights.”
I could feel the fear, and recognized it along with her clothes: a labourer. Must’ve gone rogue, or had her lord die. There’d been no deaths among their ranks that Lord Longsteel knew of since the turn of the decade, when lord Landeater had come a-conquering from some military base out there who knew where, it and five hundred other tanks. An actual truce had been called across the city to deal with it, a one-of-a-kind occurrence. “Knight-errant,” I told her.
She slid lower in her seat, arms grasping for a grip. “You going to kill me? Please don’t kill me. I been down here three days, please don’t kill me now, please help.”
Looking down, I saw a satchel at the old labourer’s side. “Throw up that first. Slowly. And don’t reach inside it.”
Her eyes darted from me to the cattle prod to the bag.
“You will only have time for one shot. It will not hit.”
She sagged again, and I knew I’d won even before she reached for the satchel’s handle. Up it went, tossing and turning. I riffled through the contents: some old canned food, some dried vegetables and meats, the usual things. Enough to sustain my return trip.
“You going to leave me here?”
I looked back down into the pit. “Is there a reason for me to take you?”
The face went blank, then opened up again. “I knows the path.”
I looked out across the blasted ruin surrounding me. “The path.”
“Just look at me sitting here and try to tell yourself it’s all sun and roses out there. Believe it or not, this pit weren’t there when I stepped on it.”
“You offer your services as a guide.”
“First time I’ve fallen, and I been heading back and forth ‘cross this place for years. You heading to the sparkbox? I can get you there, even, and that’ll take some getting into. Please. Please take me.”
I looked out there. There was only one place my thief could be hiding. And the food could be stretched. Also, if I refused to aid her, she might begin to shriek, and I wasn’t looking forwards to what that might drag out of the boxtowns. “Deal.”
She was surprisingly light, the old labourer. It took almost no effort at all for one arm to drag her bony, fleshless body up into the light again, those cloudy eyes blinking themselves silly at the world around them.
“Go,” I said, holding up her satchel in one hand, the prod in the other. “And don’t think of running.”
She nodded aimlessly, and I saw that familiar hunched cringe. I’d seen it a thousand times in the Terminal. It was good. It was right. It felt like home.
The ‘sparkbox’ did indeed take some getting into. It couldn’t have been more than three miles away, but it took almost ten to walk to it, a weaving, dodging, winding ramble of a trek that took us scraping over the edges and rims of a thousand jagged rustpits, any of which would’ve been a nearly-certain death sentence. I ceased to question my decision to bring the labourer with me after the close of the first day. Particularly since I held our food supplies at all times, and slept with my eyes open.
Getting into the building was surprisingly simple – but I suppose the natural minefield of pitfalls surrounding it had preserved it regardless of its security. My quarry certainly hadn’t passed through the door we found, its body a fused, stubborn mass that would yield to no key ever made, a handle that was eroded to a nubbed screw and a pinnacle of rust. One, two, three kicks and its hinges gave themselves up to their rust with children’s-screams of protest and outrage. Dust blizzarded the air inside, swarming the sunlight like infuriated insects.
“In,” I said.
The labourer gawped at me. “What?”
I gestured with the prod. “In.”
She went in. I followed and kept an eye on her, watched her tip-toe across the floors, wince at each groan and rattle, jump like a jackrabbit at my switching on a flashlight.
“Follow the beam,” I said, and traced a path. We walked that way, held by the light, and we walked down twisted stairs, following old signs in languages no longer spoken.
Generators. If this place had power, that’s where the thief would’ve gone.
“What’s your aim?” asked the labourer.
I considered intimidation, and decided against it. “Justice. We hunt a thief.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“No more than living. He stole a valuable of my Lord and fled. A coward is only dangerous when cornered, and still less so than any other man.”
“Oh.” And at first I believed she was responding to my words, until my flashlight crept the extra foot forwards and alit on what lay in front of her.
The generator was a massive thing, stretching from floor to ceiling and surpassing both, passing through them and into other places, strange ones. Its triplets sat beside it, still half-shrouded in the darkness.
“Fusebox,” I said. “Hold still.” The light wandered the walls as we stood there in the dark, hovering fitfully until it exposed the grey, dusty contours on a nearby wall.
“Go.”
The labourer moved quickly this time, eagerness to be done with the whole business infusing her every step. I watched her, pinned her there with the light as always, then took my first step, then four more, then felt the world move.
Less than a second later I lay on my side, half-buried under something cold and heavy. My legs were numb and my head was a fiery swollen blot that was trying to crush my own brain, moisture leaking from its back and wetting my hair where it had impacted against ancient steel. Darkness was all around me; the flashlight had been crushed under rubble. I screwed my eyes shut and concentrated, focused, narrowed reality down enough to reach my ears.
A chuckle. Footsteps – light footsteps, barely-fleshed bone, how could I forget the labourer’s weight, how could I forget my own! The sounds of clanking, clacking, clicking, tampering. And then there was light, light above me, light around me. I lay on my back in the ruins of a tunnel, a tunnel like the Terminal, like home, but lost and powerless. A sharp, searing blankness was spreading across my back: my cattle prod had snapped apart and was electrifying the rail I lay upon, spread in the middle of the tracks.
Footsteps. And from above, a grinning face. Those old foggy grey eyes…they were still clouded over. But the face they were set in was sharper than a drillbit, and full of dark amusement.
“Really? You didn’t see it coming? Not even a little? What HAS happened there in the city, for those monsters to be willing to name the likes of YOU knight-errant?”
“L-l….ord…said-“ I wheezed and clutched at my side; all my air seemed to have escaped, and more wouldn’t come in. “Said….man.”
“Oh? Hah! They’re not very good with pronouns, haven’t you noticed? Humans are all one to them, and it’s up to you to assume the sex when they speak. Clumsy idiot.” She burst into giggles for an instant, and bit her lip to cut it short. “You know, I was considering turning on the rail and putting you out of your misery. But after that display of wilful denseness and sexism combined? I think you’ve earned a slow exit from existence.” She held up something in the light, doubled vision saw a blurred shine. “Here, you can have your keys back.” A falling star, a clatter-clack on my chest. “The fusebox’s open now. I would’ve just bashed it, but running the risk of breaking anything in there? No thank you. No thank you at all. A miracle the damned place is still running, a bigger one that it hasn’t been co-opted by one of your vultures-in-vehicles-clothing out there.”
“Blassspphem…” I sighed, involuntarily. Keeping breath inside me was getting harder every second, and it wasn’t easy to begin with. I could feel that numb spark of electricity trickling down my back, like water, like a current. A current across the rail my back was spread upon, like a current in a river. Current flowing down a grid.
“Blasphemer?” She chuckled again, and this time it was forced, grim. “No. Blasphemy is bowing down to those damned things. A blasphemer is the one that turns on his family, her friends, for the chance to be a monster’s servant. All for a chance to play at being a damn-fool knight of the round table, only you’re working for the damsel-eating dragons.”
“I ssserrve….the rightful rul. Ers.” Blood in my mouth, had to swallow it, not sure if it was going down the wrong pipe. Going down any pipe. “Of all. By their might. Myy…..willll.” Current, flowing. Flowing back home. Only a trickle, but enough to sustained a flow.
“And a fat fucking lot of good it’s done you there, hasn’t it? Your people are slaves, miserable and tormented. Mine are hidden, and they’ve got hope. You’re dead. I’m alive. And this power’s going to go to people that need it, not to fill the gut of whichever over-grown poltergeist your superstitious little brain has cooked up into a god.” She pursed her lips. “So many of the damned beasties, so hard to keep track of. Especially with those ridiculous names you blind little zealots keep giving them. So tell me, less-than-man” – that mocking grin was back on her face, snapped into position –“which was your overseer?”
My face was a rigid mask, so I couldn’t smile. But I still managed a snarl of triumph, baring my teeth in the face of defeat, in the eyes of the enemy.
“Longsteel.”
And just with that name, I felt a tug against the power that leaked from my back, from the cattle prod that had been charged from the Third Rail.
She burst into laughter at that – real laughter, a loud, happy guffaw the likes I’d never heard but somehow recognized. “Hah! Sounds like an off-brand dildo. And about as impressive – never heard of him at all, the small fry.”
“My Lord’s reach is limited,” I whispered. The rail was rumbling, the earth was shaking. “But none can surpass the strength of Its fist.”
I don’t know if she heard me. By then she’d put the pieces together, turned her smiles to terror. Her feet made to move towards the staircase, but her body was slow, too slow, that bony, fleshless thing. Small. Frail. Especially when Lord Longsteel came screaming up the tunnel, twelve cars long, nine hundred feet long, Its eyes burning yellow blazes that made the sun seem cold and dead in the sky. Its roar filled the air and replaced it, turned ears into empty things, and it was the sweetest melody I had ever been unable to hear, covering even the surely unholy scream of metal created as Lord Longsteel launched Its lead car forwards and off the tracks, seizing the thief of Its wealth with iron fangs.
I watched my Lord’s wheels grinding towards me on the rails, and I knew that those final instants were perfect. My legs were vanished from my knowing, my lungs were a morass of fluids unknown, my body was a twitching, juddering ruin that was already smoking in places, but my mind had never been lighter, my soul less burdened by turmoil. The journey had been long, the foes had been cunning, but that great darkness was finally there, and at the behest of Lord Longsteel, who would have this place, this power. My duty was done.
It was going to be fine.