Although none of them knew the Caretaker, they all felt a deep grief at his death. Instinctively, they recognised that something good had passed and the universe was a worse place for it.
For a long hour, they had sat in a shady spot on the cafe terrace where they could not be seen by the other clientele, drinking cups of the hot, spicy drink and trying to make sense of what had just occurred. Ahead of them, the setting sun turned the desert the colour of blood.
'This is a right bleedin' mess. You don't know who to trust,' Veitch said.
Laura fixed a knowing eye on him. 'Very true.'
Veitch glared at her.
'I can't believe the Caretaker's dead.' Ruth's knuckles were white on her spear. 'Something so powerful, destroyed by the Enemy.'
'Janus is one of the Oldest Things in the Land,' Tom reminded her, 'and he has joined the Void.'
'So… what? This is a civil war?' Laura said.
'Could be.' As Church listened to the soaring dusk song of one of the many sects now occupying the city, he remembered a similar moment in Cairo, sitting on the edge of mystery in a hot, sprawling city, looking into the night and wondering what the future held for them. Would there ever be a chance for rest, or was this as good as it got — a brief interlude in the chaos of life before it wound down to failure and death? 'The Caretaker said the Enemy knew we were here. How?' He looked around the group carefully.
'The most obvious answer would be that someone told them,' Tom said.
Veitch sneered. 'You're saying one of us? Nah.'
'You would say that,' Laura said.
Church saw Veitch bristle and stepped in quickly. 'I'm not saying anything, except it's something we need to keep at the back of our minds.'
'That we can't trust one of us?' Veitch continued, growing more incensed. 'That defeats the whole point of the Five. A team, all together when it's backs-to-the-wall time.'
'That didn't stop you when you sold us out first time around,' Laura said.
'That wasn't me!'
'Will you two stop it?' Ruth snapped. 'Don't you get it? The Enemy knows we're here — they're not going to sit back, they're going to come looking for us… with something powerful enough to kill the Caretaker.'
Accepting the magnitude of Ruth's words, Veitch and Laura fell silent.
'So, should we leave the city tonight?' Shavi asked.
'And go where?' Church said. 'We came here to try to find a way into the House of Pain. We shouldn't leave till we've got the information we need. And it's a big, crowded city — the Enemy's going to take some time to find us. If we're smart.'
'I agree with Church,' Tom said.
'You don't get a vote, old man.' Laura swung one booted foot onto the table and stretched out, hands behind her head. The others remained tense.
Veitch sat up sharply, remembering. 'I forgot… I met a girl.'
'Did you hold hands and skip?' Laura asked.
'A girl from Earth.'
'You're sure?' Church asked.
'Looked like she'd just arrived. She was in a right panic. Being chased by something, she said.'
'Impossible,' Tom snorted. 'You know all the gateways to the Fixed Lands were closed by the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders.'
'She just got here, I tell you.'
Church thought for a moment, trying to contain his mounting excitement. 'That means there's another path back to Earth that we don't know about. We can go home.'
Ruth couldn't hide her concern. 'You're thinking about running away?'
His mind racing, Church ignored her, and the uneasiness the others were starting to exhibit. 'Drop everything else and turn this city upside down. We need to find that woman.'
The song of the cult reached a crescendo as darkness fell across the overcrowded city, stinking of sweat and misery and desperation, and filled with voices that never stopped. But with the fading of the light a new degree of misery was added. From the shadows, where nothing had been, shapes moved out into the population. No one saw them pass, but they felt them in their hearts, and the fear began to rise.
5
'Stand firm!' Decebalus bellowed as the Army of Dragons faced into a ferocious wind beneath a darkening sky. Amongst the roiling black clouds, the Riot-Beasts advanced, their eyes roving insanely. Bolts of lightning crashed randomly from them to sear the green plain.
'Sir. How are we supposed to get a bead on those things, if you don't mind me asking, sir?' Ronnie shouted above the gale. He'd polished the buttons of his army uniform ready for the battle and now wore the tin hat that had seen activity in Flanders.
'The Enemy hope to break our ranks with their war engines. They do not yet realise what weapons we wield, and neither do you. Watch.'
Decebalus raised his eyes to the heavens, ignoring the heavy rain. Despite numbering almost a hundred and fifty, the Army of Dragons was a small knot of resistance compared to the seemingly never-ending ranks of the Enemy. The Dacian barbarian was proud of his troops, huddled together in the face of such overwhelming opposition. They came from more civilised times than he knew, and he had feared their softness of muscle would hamper them in the coming struggle, but they had shown a deeper seam of hardness than he could ever have hoped. Warriors, tacticians, mystics and magicians, they were individuals with a group mind and a spirit that could never be broken. In their eyes, he could see their fear, but still they stood firm. Heroes, he thought. No wonder the Devourer of All Things was afraid of what they could achieve.
Under the clouds, the day became like night. Forty feet away, a bolt of lightning raised a shower of burned earth, and although he could feel its heat, he did not flinch. Instead, he started to laugh heartily, celebrating the storm.
'Pardon me, sir,' Ronnie said, 'but the boys and girls will probably think you've gone mad. Madder.'
'Let them! Mad, yes! Mad with joy at the horror the Enemy will feel when they see how they have underestimated us! See!'
As if on cue, the glamour disappeared and the ranks of the gods were revealed. All around the small clump of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, like a sunlit mirror at the heart of the storm, the powerful beings dazzled their mortal comrades.
'Crikey!' Ronnie exclaimed. 'Is that why you wouldn't let us see them before?'
'The gods exist to make mortals mad,' Decebalus replied. 'The less you have to do with them, the better it is for you.'
Two gleaming figures ran from the ranks at speed, arching their backs as they threw themselves into a glide just above the ground before soaring up on the air currents. One appeared to Ronnie to be flipping back and forth between two forms: a man with an ornate gold helmet and a coiled beast that appeared simultaneously to be bird, serpent and something constructed of lush foliage.
'That one goes by the name of Quetzalcoatl.' Decebalus rolled his tongue around the syllables as though it had taken him a long time to learn the word. 'All those gods are strange, but he was the strangest of all. Until the last, I could not tell if he even understood me.'
The other figure began to glow like the sun as he flew upwards. His hair was wild, like a beggar's, but he wore golden armour that gave him majesty.
'And that one also hails from the Great Dominion of the southern Americas. His name is Viracocha,' Decebalus continued. 'His melancholy is breathtaking to see. And also irritating. He claims that his tears will wash away the world. But then they all say something like that.'
Caught in the turbulence near the Riot-Beasts, the two gods fought to maintain their stability. Lightning
