Warwick didn’t say anything. Letting go of my thigh, he gripped the handlebars and revved the bike faster. Just like that, we crossed to the other side.
Into the Savage Lands.
Chapter 26
The smell hit me first.
Dirt. Shit. Urine. Gasoline. Animals. Body odor. Rotting garbage.
Sour.
Heavy.
The bouquet of animals and people living together in squalor and filth filled my nostrils and my mouth with a bitter taste. The warm summer night baked the odors into the pavement, ballooning it to nauseating levels.
The paved road quickly became cobbled, loose and crumbling under the bike tires, rattling our bones.
The streetlamps disappeared the moment we crossed over to the Savage Lands, leaving us in thick shadows, only a handful of dim lights from windows cascading down softly on us.
As my sight adjusted to the dark, I took in collapsing buildings teetering on unstable foundations. Vandalized, decaying, or destroyed, few held a hint of their former glory. Boarded-up shops, cafes, and businesses looked as though they had been looted and abandoned long before, leaving a sad feeling in the darkened doorways of the old stone buildings. The former life of this place was now merely shadows and ghosts.
Our ride started off quiet, a handful of figures dotting the streets or sleeping on the cracked pavement, with only strips of cloth or boxes to sleep on. No one ventured out for an evening stroll in the temperate night, enjoying a night with friends. But the longer we drove, the more people I saw. Most of them were skin and bones. Drunk, dirty, dressed in rags, their frames sagged as if they had given up on hope a long time ago. A few slept with the livestock, now fenced on empty parking lots and in old squares.
The unbelievable smell of piss and feces permeated the streets. Human. Horse. Sheep. Hog. Most cars were picked clean and vandalized. Some were barely shells and were being used as homes for the lucky ones who procured them. Despair reeked in the atmosphere, my skin itching with the destitute and polluted air, stabbing at my heart. Did Istvan know how bad it was here? He couldn’t possibly realize the extent. He’d never let his own people wallow in this filth without trying to do something.
Now I realized how much had been kept from us within Leopold’s walls. The news shaped and painted a picture that did not match what my eyes were taking in, and night hid most of the true horrors. Poor, yes, but this was beyond that.
“Stay close to me.” Warwick’s voice jolted me from my thoughts. “This place is dangerous.”
“We just broke out of the Halalhaz.” I leaned closer to him to speak, our mouths only an inch apart, our bloody skin pressing into each other, sticky and dirty.
“Halalhaz is civilized and orderly.” He tilted his head so I could hear him, his loose hair tickling my cheek. “It has rules. This place doesn’t. Gunslingers, gamblers, outlaws, and prostitutes with nothing to lose. They will shoot you in a blink for just looking at them wrong.”
“What?” I blinked.
“There are no laws here, princess.” He gave me a side-eye, like how adorable you still believe in fairytales. As a soldier, I guess I still believed there were laws in a society we all followed.
We turned down another road, the Hungarian name still visible on the side of the building, Király u., meaning King. The narrow street was lined with worn and ramshackle neo-classic stone buildings, their glory days forgotten. It was suffocated with people, buildings, and makeshift structures erected on roofs or crammed in places they should never have fit, choking out any sense of space. It felt like a jungle—reedy, dense—making my lungs palpitate.
He slowed down to almost a crawl as hordes of people milled everywhere, closing in the narrow lane. There were a surprising number of horses tied randomly to posts or moving freely around, adding to the intensity of closed space and putrid smell.
When the curtain fell between worlds, the rulers in the West were quick to adapt and modernize, using the magic in the air to power devices and automobiles. Not here. Only the ultra-rich could afford to buy these innovations, and most of our country reverted to simpler times. Horses did not break down under magic. Even Istvan used a horse when he was in the city.
Magic-friendly motorcycles were the lone motor vehicle being manufactured in the East. Russia and Ukraine had cornered the market, which added to their power and dominance over other countries.