And then they came to the Devil’s Hook, and Mistique’s chatter stumbled to a halt. Even casual conversation died away quickly as Hawk led his people into the Hook. It was a bad place to be, and they all knew it. The Devil’s Hook was the single poorest, most decayed, and most dangerous area in Haven. A square mile of slums and alleyways backing onto the main Docks, the Hook held more crime, corruption, and open misery than most people could bear to think about. The squalid tenement buildings were crammed with sweatshops that paid starvation wages for work on goods that often fetched high prices in the better parts of the city. Child labour was common, as was malnutrition and disease. No one ventured into. the stinking streets alone or unarmed. The Guard patrolled the Hook very loosely rather than risk open warfare with the gangs who ran it. The gangs weren’t as powerful as they once were, thanks to some sterling work by the sorcerer Gaunt, but after he left Haven the bad times soon returned as new gangs established themselves and fought for territory. Nobody was surprised. No one made any complaints. The Hook was where you ended up when you had nowhere else to go but a pauper’s grave.
All in all, the perfect spot for a new drug factory.
The Blue Dolphin was a squalid little lock-up warehouse, on one end of a rotting tenement. Chemicals from nearby factories had stained and pitted the stonework, and all the windows were boarded up. It was cheaper than shutters. The street was deserted, but Hawk could feel the pressure of watching eyes. He brought his people to a halt outside the warehouse, and quickly set up a defensive perimeter. The last thing they needed was a gang attack while they were occupied with the drug factory. Fisher moved in close beside him.
“Are you sure this is the right place, Hawk? If Morgan’s got a packing and distribution setup here, he’s going to need a lot more room than this pokey little warehouse.”
“This is the place,” said Hawk, hoping he sounded more convinced than he felt. When all was said and done, all he had to go on was the dying words of a girl already out of her mind on chacal. He pushed the thought to one side. He’d believed her then; he had to believe her now. Or she had died for nothing.
“There are mystic wards all over the place,” said Mistique. Hawk jumped slightly. He hadn’t heard her come up behind him. The sorceress smiled briefly, and then turned her attention back to the warehouse. “I can’t quite make out what kind of wards, though. Given the circumstances, I think we ought to tread carefully, just in case.”
Hawk nodded, and gestured to two of the Constables. They moved forward and cautiously tried the warehouse door. It was locked, which surprised no one. One Constable kicked the door. His clothes burst into flames that leapt up around him in seconds. He screamed shrilly and staggered back, beating at his blazing clothes with his hands. The other Constable quickly pulled him down and rolled him back and forth in the snow to smother the flames. Hawk scowled. He hadn’t expected to hit a magic defence this quickly. He made sure the injured Constable would be all right, and then turned to the sorceress.
“Get us in there, Mistique. I don’t care how you do it, but do it fast. They know we’re here now.”
The sorceress nodded eagerly, her earrings jangling accompaniment. She stared thoughtfully at the door, and wisps of fog began to appear around her, circling and twisting on the still air. The misty grey strands grew thicker, undulating disturbingly as they drifted away from the sorceress towards the warehouse door. The mists looked almost alive, and purposeful. They curled around the door, seeping past the edges and sinking into the wood itself. Mistique made a sudden, sharp gesture and the door exploded. Fragments and splinters of rotting wood rained down on the Guards as they shielded themselves with their cloaks. Where the door had been, there was now nothing but an impenetrable darkness.
Mistique turned to look at Hawk. Strands of fog still swirled around her, like ethereal serpents with no beginning or end. “Fast enough for you, darling?”
“Very impressive,” said Hawk courteously, trying hard not to sound too impressed. “Can you tell us anything about what’s beyond the doorway?”
“That’s the bad news, I’m afraid,” said Mistique. “The darkness is a dimensional gateway, leading to a small pocket dimension, the inside of which is a damn sight bigger than that lock-up. I’ve knocked out the protective wards so we can get in there, but I’ve absolutely no idea of what might be waiting for us. Sorry to be such a drag, but whoever designed this beastly setup was jolly good at his job.”
“All right,” said Hawk. “We’ll just have to take it as it comes. Brace yourselves, people; we’re going in. I want Morgan alive, and preferably intact so we can ask him questions. Anyone else is fair game. I’d prefer prisoners to corpses, but don’t put yourselves at risk. We don’t know what kind of odds we’ll be facing. Try not to wreck the place too much; you never know what might turn out to be useful evidence. Right. Let’s do it.”
He hefted his axe and walked forward, Fisher and Mistique on either side of him. From behind came a brief whisper of steel on leather as the Guards drew their weapons and started after him. Hawk gritted his teeth and plunged into the darkness. There was a sharp moment of intense heat, and then he burst through into Morgan’s factory. His first sight of the place was almost enough to stop him in his tracks, but he forced himself to keep going to make room for the others coming behind. Morgan’s warehouse was an insane mixture of planes and angles and inverted stairways that could not have existed in anything but a pocket universe.
There was no up or down, in any way that made any sense. People walked on one side of a surface or another, or on both, and gravity seemed merely a matter of opinion. Simple wooden stairways connected the various level planes, twisting and turning around each other like mating snakes, and walls became floors became ceilings, depending on which way you approached them. Hawk shook off his disorientation and concentrated on the force of armed men rushing towards him from a dozen different directions. He didn’t have to count them to know his own small group was vastly outnumbered.
“Mistique!” he yelled quickly. “Take out the stairways. Bring this place down around their ears!”
“I’m afraid we have a slight problem, dear,” said the sorcerer, staring off into the distance. “Morgan has his own sorceress here, and I’m rather tied up at the moment keeping him from killing us all.”
“Can you take him?”
“Probably, if you stop interrupting. And if you can keep those nasty-looking men-at-arms away from me.”
Hawk yelled instructions to his people, and the Constables moved forward to form a barrier between Mistique and the approaching men-at-arms, while Captain Doughty and Captain Burns stayed at her side as bodyguards. Fisher looked at Hawk.
“And what are we going to do?”
“Find Morgan,” said Hawk grimly. “I’m not taking any chances on his getting away. Mistique, when you’re ready, don’t wait for orders from me. Just trash the place.”
Mistique nodded, absorbed in her sorcerous battle. Thick strands of fog twisted around her like dogs straining at the leash. Hawk started down the nearest stairway, with Fisher close behind him. They hadn’t gone far when Hawk heard the first clash of steel as his people met the men-at-arms. He didn’t look back.
In what might have been the centre of the mad tangle of planes and stairways was a more-or-less open area with a lot of excited movement. It seemed as good a place as any to start looking. The stairs turned and twisted under Hawk, and he quickly learned to keep his gaze on his feet and ignore what was going on around him. A man-at-arms in full chain mail came running up the stairs, waving his sword with more confidence than style. Hawk cut him-down with a single blow, and hurled his body over the side of the stairway. The dead man fell in half a dozen different directions before disappearing from sight in the maze of stairways.
More men-at-arms came charging towards Hawk, six men in the lead, with a lot more on the way. Bad odds, on a rickety wooden staircase. He looked quickly about him, and grinned as he spotted a large flat p
lane not too far away. It stood at right angles to him, but then, so did the two men on it, frantically packing paper parcels into two large crates on a wide table. He looked back at Fisher, and pointed at the plane. She raised an eyebrow, and then nodded sharply. They clambered up onto the narrow wooden banister, which creaked dangerously under their weight, and leapt out into space towards the right-angled plane. Gravity changed suddenly as they left the stairs, and slammed them down hard on the bare wooden plane.
Hawk and Fisher hit the floor rolling, and were quickly up on their feet again. The two men packing were already gone. Hawk hefted one of the small paper parcels, and then looked at the size of the packing case. That crate could hold an awful lot of drugs ... if it was drugs. A horrible thought struck him, and he opened the packet and sniffed cautiously at the grey powder inside. He relaxed slightly and blew his nose hard. It was chacal. The sharp acidic smell was quite distinctive. Fisher yelled a warning, and he threw the packet aside and looked up. A man-at-arms leaned out from an upside-down stairway overhead and cut at Hawk with his sword. Hawk parried with his axe, but couldn’t reach high enough to attack the man. He backed away, and the swordsman moved along the stairway after him. There was a strange, dreamlike quality to the fight, with both men upside-down to the other, but Hawk knew better than to let the strangeness distract him. If he couldn’t figure out a way to get at his opponent, he was a dead man. An axe wasn’t made for defence. He bumped into the table, and an idea struck him. He grabbed the open packet and threw the chacal powder into the other man’s face. The man-at-arms screamed, and dropped his sword to claw at his eyes with both hands.
“Hawk!”
He spun round to find Fisher standing at the edge of the plane, fighting off three of the five men-at-arms who’d jumped down off the banister after the Guards. Two already lay dead at her feet. Hawk sprinted over to join her, ducked under the first man’s sword, and swung his axe in a vicious sideways arc. The heavy steel axehead punched through the man’s chain mail and buried itself in his rib cage. Bones broke and splintered, and the impact drove the man-at-arms to his knees, coughing blood. Hawk yanked the axe free and booted the man off the edge of the plane. The dying man fell upwards out of sight.
Fisher had already cut down another of her opponents, and now stood toe to toe with the last remaining adversary. Steel rang on steel and sparks flew as the blades met, hammering together and dancing apart in a lightning duel of strength and skill. Hawk started forward to help her, and then stopped as he saw more men-at-arms running down a winding stairway to join the fight. Fisher saw them too, and quickly kneed her opponent in the groin.
“Get the hell out of here, Hawk. Find Morgan. I’ll hold them off.” She cut her opponent’s throat, and sidestepped neatly to avoid the jetting blood. “Move it, Hawk!”
Hawk nodded abruptly, and turned and ran down the other stairway. heading once again for what had looked like the centre of operations. From behind him came the clash of sword on sword as Fisher met the first of the new onslaught, but he didn’t look back. He didn’t dare. He pressed on through the maze, passing from stairway to plane to stairway and cutting down anyone who tried to get in his way. All around him Morgan’s people were running back and forth, looking for orders or weapons or just heading for the exit. Morgan wouldn’t have gone, though. This was his place, his territory, and he’d trust in his men and his sorcerer to protect him. A sudden piercing scream caught Hawk’s attention, and he looked up and round in time to see a man dressed in sorcerer’s black stagger drunkenly across a plane at right angles to Hawk’s stairway. Streamers of thick milky fog burst out of his mouth and eyes and ears. His head swelled impossibly and then exploded in a spreading cloud of crimson mist. The body crumpled to the floor as the last echo of the sorcerer’s dying cry faded slowly away.
Hawk grinned. So much for Morgan’s sorcerer. He was close to the centre now; he could feel it. There were drugs and people and men-at-arms everywhere, and there, straight ahead, he saw a familiar face in an earth-brown cloak and hood. Morgan. Hawk ran forward, cutting his way through two swordsmen foolish enough to try and stop him. Their blood splashed across his face and hands, but he didn’t pause to wipe it off. He couldn’t let Morgan escape. He couldn’t.
Hold my hand. Hold it up where I can see it....
Morgan looked once at the bloodstained Guard rushing towards him, and then continued stuffing papers into a leather pouch. Three men-at-arms moved forward to stand between Hawk and Morgan. Hawk hit them at a dead run, swinging his axe double-handed. He never felt the wounds he took, and when it was all over, he stepped across their dead bodies to advance slowly on the drug baron.
Seen up close, Morgan didn’t look like much. Average height and build, with a bland face, perhaps a little too full to be handsome. A mild gaze and a civilised smile. He didn’t look like the kind of man who’d made his fortune through the death and suffering of others. But then, they never did. Hawk moved slowly forward. Blood ran thickly down from a wound in his left thigh, and squelched inside his boot. There was more blood, soaking his arms and sides, some of it his. Even so, Morgan had enough sense not to try and run. He knew he wouldn’t make it. They stood facing each other, while from all around came shouts and screams and the sounds of fighting.
“Who are you?” said Morgan finally. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m every bad dream you ever had,” said Hawk. “I’m a Guard who can’t be bought.”
Morgan shook his head slowly, as a father chides a son who has made an understandable mistake. “Everyone has his price, Captain. If not you, then certainly someone among your superiors. I’ll never come to trial. I know too much, about too many people. And I really do have friends in high places. Quite often, I helped put them there. So I’m afraid all this blood and destruction has been for nothing. You won’t be able to make a case against me.”
Hawk grinned. “You’re the second person who’s told me that today. He was wrong, too. You’re going to hang, Morgan. I’ll come and watch.”
There was a muffled sound from behind a drapery to their right. Morgan glanced at it, and then looked quickly away. For the first time, he seemed a little uneasy. Hawk moved slowly over to the curtain, unconsciously favouring his wounded leg.
“What’s behind here, Morgan?”
“Experimental animals. We had to test the drug, to establish the correct dosage. Nothing that would interest you.”
Hawk swept the cloth to one side, and froze for a moment. Inside a crude, steel-barred cage lay a pile of dead young men and women, tangled together. Some were barely teenagers. The bodies were torn and mutilated, and it was clear most of them had died tearing at each other and themselves. One man’s hand was buried to the wrist in another’s ripped-open stomach. A young girl had torn out her own eyes. There was blood everywhere, but not enough to hide the characteristic colorless white skin of chacal use. Hawk turned back to Morgan, who hadn’t moved an inch.
“Where did you get them?” said Hawk.
Morgan shrugged. “Runaways, debtors’ prisons, even a few volunteers. There are always some ready to risk their lives for a new thrill.”
“You know what this new drug does,” said Hawk. “So why are you getting involved with it? There isn’t enough bribe money in the world to make the Guard overlook the slaughter this shit will cause. Even the other drug barons would turn against you over something like this.”
“I won’t be here when it breaks,” said Morgan. “There’s a lot of money in this. Millions of ducats. More than enough to leave Haven and set up a new and very comfortable life somewhere else. You could have a life like that, Captain. There’s enough money for everyone. Just name your price, and I guarantee you I can meet it.”
“Really?” said Hawk. He stepped forward suddenly, grabbed a handful of Morgan’s robe and dragged him over to the steel cage. “You want to know my price, Morgan? Bring them back to life. Bring those poor bastards back! Go on; give just one of them his life back and I
’ll let you go, here and now.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Captain,” said Morgan evenly. “And very foolish.”
“You’re under arrest,” said Hawk. “Tell your people to lay down their weapons and surrender.”
“Or?”
Hawk grinned. “Believe me, Morgan, you don’t want to know.”
“I’ll have to speak to my sorcerer first.”
“Don’t bother; he’s dead.”
Morgan looked at him blankly. and then open terror rushed across his face. “We’ve got to get out of here! If he’s dead, this whole place could collapse at any moment. It’s only his magic that kept it stable!”
Hawk swore briefly. He knew real fear when he saw it. “Tell your men to surrender. Do it!”
Morgan started shouting orders, and all over the maze of planes and stairways the fighting came to a halt. Hawk yelled orders to his men. and the Guards began herding Morgan’s people towards the dimensional portal. Hawk dragged Morgan along himself, never once releasing his grip on the drug baron’s robe. The stairway began to sway and tremble under his feet. A nearby plane cracked across from end to end. Streams of dust fell from somewhere high above. There were creaks and groanings all around, and the wooden handrail turned to rot and mush under Hawk’s hand. Morgan began pleading with him to go faster. Mistique appeared out of nowhere in a clattering of beads and bracelets and ran beside them as they hurried towards the portal.
“So, you did get the little rat after all. Well done, darling.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that in front of the men,” said Hawk. “Can you use your magic to hold this place together long enough for us all to get out?”
“I’m doing my best, darling, but it’s not really my field. We should all make it. If we’re lucky.”
They reached the portal to find it bottlenecked by the last of Morgan’s people. The drug baron screamed at them to get out of the way. but Hawk held him back. Guards encouraged the slow movers on their way with harsh language and the occasional kick up the backside. The remaining stairways broke apart and collapsed in a roar of cracking timber. The planes spun and twisted in midair, fraying at the edges. Loose magic snapped on the air like disturbed static. The last of Morgan’s people went through, and Hawk and Morgan and Mistique followed the Guards out.