for the injured, and knew he couldn't spare even one Constable to watch over the
drug baron. So he just punched Morgan out, manacled the unconscious man to a
nearby railing and left him there. No one objected, not even his own people. A
few of them even cheered. Hawk smiled briefly at the memory, and returned to
work.
They had no real tools to work with, so they attacked the broken bricks and
stone and wood with their bare hands, forming human chains to transfer the
larger pieces. They worked with frantic speed, spurred on by the screams and
sobbing of those trapped below, but soon found it was better to work slowly and
carefully rather than risk the debris collapsing in on itself, if a vital
support was unwittingly removed. Most of the bodies were women and children,
crushed and broken by the horrid weight. Crammed together in one room sweatshops
and factories, they never stood a chance. But some survived, sheltered by
protecting slabs of masonry, and they were reason enough to keep on digging.
And all the time he worked, Hawk was haunted by a simple, inescapable thought;
it was all his fault. If he hadn't led the raid on Morgan's factory, the pocket
dimension wouldn't have collapsed, taking the tenement with it, and all those
people, all those women and children, would still be alive.
Eventually the fire brigade arrived, encouraged by the presence of so many
Guards. Normally they wouldn't have entered the Devil's Hook without an armed
escort and a written guarantee of hazard pay. They quickly took over the running
of the operation, and things began to go more smoothly. They set about propping
up the adjoining buildings, and dealt efficiently with the many water leaks.
Doctors and nurses arrived from a nearby charity hospital, and began sorting out
the real emergencies from the merely badly injured. Fisher took the opportunity
to drag Hawk over to a doctor, and insisted he have his wounds treated. He
didn't have the strength to argue.
More volunteers turned up to help, followed by a small army of looters. Hawk
waited for the doctor to finish the healing spell, and then rose to his feet,
feeling stiff but a damn sight more lively. He walked over to confront the
looters, Fisher at his side. The first few took one look at what was coming
towards them, went very pale, and skidded to a halt. Word passed quickly back,
and most of the would-be looters decided immediately that they were needed
somewhere else, very urgently. The ones who couldn't move or think that fast
found themselves volunteered to help dig through the rubble for survivors.
The work continued, interrupted increasingly rarely by a sudden shout as someone
thought they heard a cry for help. Everyone would stop where they were, ears
straining against the quiet as they tried to locate the faint sound. Sometimes
there was nothing but the quiet, and work would slowly resume, but sometimes the
cry would come again, and then everyone would work together, sweating and
straining against the stubborn stone and wood until the survivors could be
gently lifted free. There were hundreds of dead in the rubble, and only a few
dozen living, but each new life snatched from the crushing stone gave the
exhausted volunteers new will to carry on. Nurses moved among the workers with
cups of hot soup and mulled ale, and an encouraging word for those who looked as
though they needed it. And still more volunteers came to help, drawn from the
surrounding area by the scale of the tragedy.
More Guards arrived, expecting riots, chaos, and mass looting, and were shocked
to find so many people from the Hook working together to help others. Fisher set
some of them to blocking off the street, to keep out sightseers and ghouls who'd
just get in the way, and put the rest to work digging in the ruins, so that
those who'd been working the longest could get some rest. Some of the Guard
Constables weren't too keen on dirtying their hands with manual labor, but one
cold glare from Hawk was enough to convince them to shut up and get on with it.
It was at this point that the local gang leader, Hammer, arrived, along with
twenty or so of his most impressive-looking bullies, and insisted on talking to
the man in charge. Hawk went over to meet him, secretly glad of an excuse for a
break—and a little guilty at feeling that way. So he wasn't in the best of moods
when the gang leader delivered his ultimatum. Hammer was a medium-height,
well-padded man in his early twenties. He dressed well, if rather flashily, and
had the kind of face that fell naturally into a sneer.
'What the hell do you think you're doing here?' he said flatly. 'This is my
territory, and no one works here without paying me. No one. So either pay up,
right here, where everyone can see it, or I'll be forced to order my people to
shut you down. Nothing happens in my territory without my permission.'
Hawk looked at him. 'There are injured people here who need our help. Some of
them will die without it.'
'That's your problem.'
Hawk nodded, and kneed Hammer in the groin. All the color went out of the gang
leader's face, and he dropped to his knees, his hands buried between his thighs.
'You're under arrest,' said Hawk. He looked hard at the shocked bullies. 'The
rest of you, get over there and start digging, or I'll personally cut you all
off at the knees.'
The bullies looked at him, looked at their fallen leader, and decided he just
might mean it. They shrugged more or less in unison, and moved over to work in
the ruins. The local people raised a brief cheer for Hawk, surprising him and
them, and then they all got back to work. The gang leader was left lying huddled
in a ball, handcuffed by his ankle to a railing.
The hours dragged on, and the search turned up fewer and fewer survivors. The
fire brigade's engineers set up supports for the adjoining buildings; nothing
elaborate, but enough to keep them secure until the builders could be called in.
People began to drift away, too exhausted or dispirited to continue. Hawk sent
most of his Guards back to Headquarters with Morgan and his people, the crates
of chacal now carefully labeled and numbered, and the gang leader Hammer, under
Captain Burns's direction. But Hawk stayed on, and Fisher stayed with him. Hawk
didn't know whether he stayed because he felt he was still needed or because he
was punishing himself, but he knew he couldn't leave until he was sure there was
no one still alive under the wreckage. Someone cried out they'd heard something,
and once again everything came to a halt as the diggers listened, holding their
breath, trying to hear a faint cry for help over the beating of their own
hearts. One of the men yelled, and everyone converged on a dark, narrow shaft
that fell away into the depths of the ruins. One of the diggers dropped a small
stone down the shaft. They all listened hard, but no one heard it hit bottom.
'Sounded like a child,' said the man who first raised the alarm. 'Pretty quiet.
Must be trapped at the bottom of the shaft somewhere.'
'We daren't try to widen the hole,' said Fisher. 'This whole area is touchy as
hell. One wrong move, and the shaft could collapse in on itself.'
'We can't just leave the child there,' said a woman dully, kneeling at the edge
of the shaft. 'Someone could go down on a rope, and fetch it up.'
