forward. He was still in the game, his barrel chest not yet hollowed by the long trek, and Lucian was glad to have at least one ally. And, unlike Lucian, Max had learned to keep his eyes on the ground and follow the flow of the convoy. He was a big, proud man, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he wanted to live.
And here, everyone had a role to play. Theirs were grovelling simpleton number 1000, and whipped dog number umpteen-and-one, respectively.
Lucian couldn’t bring himself to do that. A self-destructive itch poked its head up every time he lowered his gaze and tried surrendering to his captors’ will. He was marking himself a prime candidate for public execution—plenty of examples had been made on the road, and there was still plenty of time for another—and he sensed that notoriety was something altogether a bad idea for another reason: Charlie had remained close to him all the while, within sight and earshot. He was a prized, secret cargo for the boy, at least in his mind; a morsel wrapped up in his handkerchief to savour later.
“Keep your head down. Keep moving,” Vandeborn hissed. “We’re almost there.”
“We’re there, alright.” Lucian took up the plodding pace once more, and together, they made their way from the ridge and descended into the prison camp.
As they grew closer, he began to pick out more detail: the fires were in fact open-air smithing kilns, and the milling droves weren’t clustering around them for warmth, but rather to heat old, blunted blades and sharp implements, readying them for reshaping. Farther away, showers of sparks coughed up above the tent posts where he guessed they were being hammered by others strong enough to wield a hammer.
They were forging weapons of war. Thousands of hunting knives, machetes, axes, pitchforks, even rough-hewn scaffolding poles whittled to sharp spears. And these were only the hand-to-hand weapons. He sensed that elsewhere, close by, were a great many firearms. The guards posted all around carried theirs with careless ease, indicating a plentiful supply.
Yet, peeking above all this, the thing that grabbed his attention the most was Charlie’s gaze. He could feel it moving over him, as it so often had since they had started the long walk, pressing into the nape of his neck as though searching out the perfect spot to put a bullet.
The boy had plans to make him suffer, and he meant to make good on his promise for revenge.
But he wasn’t up to it. Not yet, anyway. Anger had carried him this far, led him to this dangerous place—holding a secret captive amongst myriad others. Lucian was more valuable to them than any of these others by a mile-long stretch, a potential political prisoner.
Lucian would never have negotiated to save the life of another if it were him back home and someone else out here. But he knew fools back in New Canterbury and Canary Wharf who would. He couldn’t live with himself, knowing they might have to sacrifice some vital strategic advantage in exchange for his sorry arse.
“I don’t get it,” Vandeborn said. “They’re up in a fit about you all hogging food when the famine hit the hardest. They started the burning and killing to stop all that happening again. Sons of bitches would still get a bullet in the face from me, but I can wrap my head around where they’d be coming from.” He grunted and glanced up momentarily from his feet, frowning at the camp ahead. “But I don’t get this. None of these people are part of this. None of them wanted it. They’re just ordinary folk.” He paused as they passed under the nose of a skull-faced guard of almost seven feet, his skin a sickly yellow, a cruel soul if Lucian had ever seen one.
“No,” Lucian said. “It’s them that are behind all this. The ones holding the guns, and the keys.” He grunted, not quite managing a laugh. “But the real kicker is that I’m betting bastards like that don’t even know why they’re here. This is just what they do. In the Old World, they would have been the rapists, the murderers, the psychopaths and the autocrats. But here, after the End, they’re the perfect engine to blow this all out of proportion. I’m betting it all started amicable enough, with a real heart and message. But now …”
“Snowballed. That pigeon banner, the sob story about the starving women and children who died because of your mission, it’s become