“Yet, we’re gonna follow them anyway?”
“They’re going the same way we are. They must know about the safehouse?”
“Obviously, you dolt.” She smacked him upside the head. “Look at the bodies in this shop. Efficiently killed. Don’t be such a Scurred Hatch.” It was a common insult among young drakken prodding one to do something they were clearly afraid to do. “What are we going to do?”
Lojen rubbed the flattened nubs where the horns should be. He was trying to think what their father would do. What a wardkeeper would do.
Ruane stuck her head around his bulk, looking at the surrounding buildings. An empty alley, no place for cover. Windows that didn’t appear capable of opening without breaking the glass. That wouldn’t do. A few balconies, that was about it.
“Well?”
He shrugged. “I’m thinking.”
“We don’t have time for you to think! The Gutter King’s waiting for us. And if those soldiers are going toward the safehouse, he’s in danger.”
The scourge stopped, head turning back their way. Broken shells, he cursed inwardly. To Ruane, “Keep your voice down.”
Both ducked back into the doorway, tense like fresh-made planks waiting for the scourge’s gunfire to rip them to shreds like the poor sots who washed the haberdashery floor red. His leathery palms became balmy slick. Heartbeats turned to seconds turned to minutes. Silence. Easing slowly around the corner, he saw nothing. The soldiers and the scourge gone.
“Now’s our chance, brother.”
“I don’t know, Ru.”
They had to follow, even Lojen knew that. Honor bound him to this path and death meant nothing without those horns—though he preferred to keep on living if they had a choice in the matter.
He knew it, he just needed a kick in the tail to act more times than not.
Then, gunshots. The dramatic thud-thud-thud of aetheric bullets striking brick. A volley returned the first, more gunfire ricocheted, the sound was thunder.
“Guess they found the safehouse,” Ruane muttered. Lojen gave her a look for stating the obvious. More shots, followed by grunts and cries of pain. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll go fi—"
Lojen took a deep breath, cutting her off. “Stay behind me.”
If drakken had eyebrows like humir, she’d be raising them as far as they could go.
Lojen crept with his scaled and spiked back against the wall of the shop, Ruane right behind as they slunk down the alley in the direction of the gunfire. It continued, the gunshots, unabated in rapid bursts, louder and fiercer the closer they stepped.
The buildings were the same as those in all Drenth’s sectors where the miners resided, rundown and barely standing. Graffiti and gang symbols marred the walls. Cracked neon tubes of Aere lambent along the rooftops, some aerescreens still with pixels, but none shone down in the alley, which was gloomy muck in the dark of evenfall.
The shots stopped.
With a mischievous grin, Ruane raced across to the other side of the street. Lojen may have made the first move, but it wasn’t an overly intelligent one, he realized. They were like sitting clay pots for target practice if anyone decided to retreat. At least on the other side of the alley were long shadows of black where the buildings blotted the minimal light in jagged strips from broken windows higher up.
Lojen sighed before overtaking her. Too rash, Father. I seriously have tried with her.
Around the farthest corner, Lojen noted the bodies heaped atop the pavement. Blood sprinkled the ground like someone had dropped a cask of red wine from one of the balconies above. All but one wore armored vests and mismatched miner clothing. Rebels.
A clash farther in the depths of the alley beyond. Ruane set her feet, ready for a brawl. A few gasps, a crash through broken glass. “I’m going down there.”
“The Arbiter’s bloody axe you are!” Lojen hissed. “You stay here.”
Ruane leveled a glare at him and puffed out her chest, “I’m going with you.”
Lojen rounded on her, standing to his full height, which towered over her by nearly a foot. “Stay here.”
The vehemence in his voice must have startled her, for she scanned his eyes before nodding without a further complaint. Ruane gripped his claw before she hustled off into the darkness of the alley while he made his way toward the safehouse. She was eager, too eager.
Heart pounding, fear rose in his stomach like Justice’s wardrums. But he moved forward, finally displaying the eggs to do what he was meant to do.
His nostrils flared at the aroma of blood wafting up from the tunnel, the supposed entrance to the rebel safehouse. Bodies all about. Some were rebels, three were the corpses of the soldiers who were with the scourge, the leader nowhere to be found. Ripped asunder by metal death, bodies contorted as they lay, slumped against the walls. Blood coated everything.
It was quiet. No sounds down in the tunnel. No screams. Just emptiness.
Justice, protect me.
The tunnel swallowed Lojen as he was devoured by darkness. Luckily, drakken had excellent night vision, so even though there was a slight orange glow from quadran-sized, aethecite-powered orbs all along the copper tubes above his head, he saw near perfect as if he was standing in a field under the midday sun, nary a cloud in the sky.
Roughly hewn, the tunnel was supported by rounded concrete arches every ten paces. No doors or branches, merely a straight path to follow. Besides the aethecite tubes, Lojen noted a pair of water sewage pipes and a thin wire he figured was for communications. Muddy bootprints pocked the ground, the freshest belonging to the scourge. Their scent mingled with the blood cloying his senses.
He drew his drakken longknife and stalked down the tunnel, only to reach a three-tined fork, each branching into further gloom. He squatted and scanned the ground. Nothing down the center, nor the righthand path indicated movement. No boot trails.
So, he went left, picking out the prints scuffed into the ground.
Minutes turned and he saw and heard nothing, just his own hurried breathing. He was on edge, worry crept in. A nervous worry. They were closer to his father’s horns than ever before, so close, he could almost imagine the feel of the hard keratin under his talons.
A pair of corpses lay in the tunnel ahead. Lojen stopped well short, going to a knee, his back against the tunnel wall. Straining his eyesight to its limit, he surveyed beyond the corpses but saw nothing that would indicate a threat. Just the bodies in the stillness.
“You gon’ sit here all day, Scurred Hatch?”
