After the great multitude of lishas and hurums had tried and failed to solicit the Ikark’s aid, Oresh and Askura had gone back down to the docks. Half of the Sunset Tower was still underwater, blocking the entrance to the canal. The two of them joined a dwindling band of volunteers who were fishing bricks out of the water and piling them in haphazard pyramids.
By the mid-afternoon, Oresh’s body was completely drained,
so he found a quiet spot amongst the pyramids and let himself nod off. He awoke
to the smell of smoke. The sky was opaquely black. As he fumbled his way
through the darkness, he came across a hurum woman cowering behind a tower of
rubble. As soon as she saw him, her eyes widened.
“Please! Please don’t eat me!”
“What? I’m not going to do that”
The woman shrunk into herself and started sobbing. The
sounds of screams, shouts and a constant, unsettling roar reached Oresh’s ears.
He ran to the docks – on each side of the canal, in the Ekuan quarter, on the
slopes, even in the Rush itself, fires were raging, devouring whole swathes of
Kurush, swelling into soaring infernos, belching viscous smoke into the sky. He
could hear the cacophony of thousands of mud-bricks cracking and crumbling.
Lishas and hurums were running this way and that, carrying children, chests and
knives, but not one of them was carrying a bucket of water. Has the dream of
Kurush finally died? Oresh thought, is this what reality looks like?
The thought of his mother pushed him out of his paralysing
shock. She was probably alone and scared in their squalid flat. But no sooner
had he started to run along the dock, a bloodcurdling scream made him stop in
his tracks. Inside a half-collapsed warehouse that had been torn apart by the
wave, Askura was between the jaws of a lisha, her pure white priestess’s robe strewn
on the ground.
“Oresh! Help me!” she cried as she clawed at the lisha’s
hands clasped around her chest, “Please help me! I don’t want to die! Do
something! Anything!”
The lisha had dark arrowheads running down his face, the
very same lisha who had been with them at the Rush’s gate. He was leisurely
chewing on Askura, his eyes closed, apparently oblivious to her desperate flailing.
Oresh ran forward, but his path was blocked by Lydda. Her stomach was bulging
and moaning.
“Well if it isn’t our tenant. This is none of your business.
Be on your way”
Oresh tried to push past her, but she grabbed him by the
collar and hurled him onto the ground.
“Oresh!” Askura shrieked, “Help!”
Staroz started gulping. Her sapphire eyes wide, her face
twisted with fear, screaming with all her might to the heavens, Askura slipped
down into his throat. Oresh watched in horror as she travelled down his neck
and into his stomach. Staroz made a guttural groan of satisfaction.
“Drink some orokosa!” said Oresh, “Please, I beg you!”
Staroz chuckled, “Make me. By the Sun she was delicious.
What a day to be a lisha”
Sprawled on the ground, these two lishas grinning
sadistically at him, fresh blood splattered on their tunics, Oresh felt numb.
He had no orokosa, no allies, and certainly no strength or skill to fight. He
knew he couldn’t save Askura. So he scrambled to his feet and kept running
along the docks, but with each step his heart grew icier, the guilt of
abandoning his friend to that horrific fate crushing his chest until it became
hard to breathe. But fear pushed him forward.
As he ran, he passed lishas slumped on the ground patting
their bloated stomachs, or some who had a pair of legs kicking the air wildly
in their maws. In the meat market, the voluptuous woman was shrieking as
several lishas climbed up her column. Surrounded by blazing buildings, Oresh
saw the smith with the flame-red beard Oddyr swing his hammer this way and
that, swirling in a furious dance as he cracked the bones of the lishas
swarming around him, until eventually their blades and claws sank into his flesh.
His hammer shattered the jaw of one last lisha, before he staggered and
crumpled onto the ground.
Oresh made it to the Ekuan quarter, but the tight alleyways
were thick with smoke. Fires were spreading quickly through the densely packed
hovels. He fumbled his way through the maze of alleys, lishas and hurums
constantly pushing past him, swarms of kamas scurrying along the walls. The air
was so hot and thick with smoke that his throat burned. When he reached his
flat, he saw the door was already open. He froze in the doorway. His mother lay
on the floor, her vivid pink tunic drenched in blood, her eyes staring
lifelessly at the ceiling. Meanwhile a hurum man, a bronze knife in one hand,
his pockets stuffed with Gishka’s jewellery, was busy ransacking their
possessions.
Oresh’s mind ground to a halt. She couldn’t be dead, yet the
flat was full of the metallic stench of her blood. Her body lay there
motionlessly, like some deranged trickster had replaced her with a macabre
doll. Exhausted and with nowhere else to run to, his legs gave way and he fell
to his knees. The robber jumped when he saw him in the doorway, then without
second thought raised his knife and charged. Oresh’s muscles felt like syrup.
What difference would fighting back even make?
Suddenly Oresh was pushed flat onto the floor as someone
barrelled over him and tackled the robber. The lisha with golden scales snapped
the hurum’s fingers like they were twigs, making the knife clatter to the
floor, before grasping his hair and battering his face against the wall until
he fell limp. Gamoz’s face, usually jovial, was gristly in a way which matched
his scars. He took one sombre look at Gishka, then dragged Oresh to his feet.
“We need to get on a ship. Let’s go”
Grabbing Oresh’s arm, Gamoz pulled him out of the flat and
through the smoke-clogged alleys, leading him like a dazed animal. The image of
his mother’s blood-soaked body, and the sound of Askura’s desperate cries as
she was swallowed, burned in his mind, yet they felt like scenes from a
nightmare. He’d wake up tomorrow and tell them what a horrible dream he’d had.
Everything would be back to normal. But he knew that wouldn’t happen, he knew
he would never see them again, he knew that they had left this world. And he
hadn’t been able to say goodbye to them, much less save them from their
harrowing, agonising ends. The tears trickled, then poured, then flooded as he
wailed like a baby.
At the docks, amidst the chaos and fire, a shrivelled old
lisha was hobbling along with his walking stick, laughing to himself as though
he’d just thought up a rib-cracking joke.
“Pilesh, what are you doing?”
“Is that you, boy? Didn’t I tell you! Didn’t I tell you this
would happen!”
Gamoz, without any questions about this strange man, picked
him up, hoisted him onto his back and kept running. There were few ships left
in the canal that weren’t ablaze and slowly sinking into the water. One that
was still afloat was Lurush’s leviathan with the blood-red hull, it was already
crowded with lishas and hurums. A gang of lishas paced on the dockside eying the
hurums on board, but Bukur stood on the jetty, pointing his glaive and
razor-sharp gaze at them. The gang eventually relented and left in search of
easier meals.
“Oresh!” Bukur was haggard but clearly relieved to see his
cousin, “Get on board, we’re almost full”
A moment later Goresh appeared, carrying Anka who was
wrapped in a violet blanket. Her eyes were red and hollow. Oresh imagined his
looked the same. Behind them came Lurush, huffing and puffing as she waddled as
fast as she could.
“That’s… my… ship!” she said between wheezes
“I’ve commandeered it,” said Bukur, “get on board now if you
want to get out of here”
“Where are we going?” said Oresh
“How should I know?”
They clambered onto the ship as Bukur and Goresh untethered
it from the moorings, before jumping on themselves. With the vast sail unfurled
and the huddled passengers taking up the oars, the monstrosity lurched out of
the docks, away from the fires and into the starless night.
Constructive criticism welcome
© Paul Bramhall
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