The Broken God by Gareth Hanrahan (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“Hey, I killed your uncle,” she taunts him.

“My uncle failed the dragon. I will not!” shouts Rasce. He picks up a lump of rubble from a rooftop and flings it at her with inhuman strength, but she dodges. Someone cheers from one of the nearby towers, and the call’s taken up by other voices. The city’s turning on Rasce.

“Going to kill the dragon, too!” shouts Cari, and a shout of approval goes up. “I killed Pesh, remember? You think one lousy dragon is going to—”

A shadow falls across the rooftop, blocking the light from the glimmering towers. Snuffing out the shouts and cheering.

“Yes,” whispers Rasce. Cari’s distracted for an instant, terror clutching her heart. For all her bravado, she’s still powerless here. And an instant is all it takes – the stone beneath her liquifies, catching her and trapping her in place.

Rasce approaches, slowly, painfully. Limping like Spar. For him, the stone is solid, and he walks unhindered.

“You still lose,” Cari gasps. “Rat knows about Lanthorn Street. And he’s got Spar. Temple denial, fucker.”

The dragon’s shadow passes. Taras does not land here.

“I always win,” Rasce whispers, and there’s no joy in his voice.

The door shudders again as the Elder Ghoul smashes into it.

When Baston knew him, Rat was a scrawny little wretch, wiry with ghoul-strength, but small. He’s grown since then. The beast on the far side of the door is as heavy as an elephant – but the door holds.

Another crash. The whole of Lanthorn Street shakes, but the door’s reinforced, stone bound with Rasce’s divine will, and the ghoul can’t break through.

A scuttle of claws. Rat’s moving, climbing the outer wall of the house. Think. Where would he go? What’s the easiest way in?

The attic window. The sniper’s nest. Baston grabs a weapon and runs, pounding up the stairs. Once the ghoul gets inside, there’ll be no way to stop him.

He rounds the top of the stairs and fires blind. The heavy blunderbore, Dredger’s cannon, roars as it fills the attic room with shrapnel. Rat yowls in shock as the blast catches him in the face. The ghoul topples backwards, falling from his perch to crash into the courtyard below. Black blood stains the white stone of the attic windowsill.

Baston darts over to the edge and looks down. Rat pulls himself upright, paws at his head. One of his horns cracks and comes away when he touches it. The whole side of his face is a bloody mess, one eye dark and ruined.

“Give it up, Rat! We belong to them now, the dragons and the gods. You can’t beat them. We can’t beat them.” He reloads the blunderbore, aims it at the Elder Ghoul. Dares Rat to try climbing again.

Instead, the ghoul glares up at him, and Baston feels tendrils of Rat’s thought creeping into his mind. Penetrating him like tree roots, pushing blindly at the foundations of his mind. A slurry of rot and fetid grave-earth slithering into his throat. “HURRH. MY KIND EAT THE BONES OF GODS. YOU CANNOT STOP ME, MORTAL CHILD.” The Elder Ghoul is a demigod of sorts, with powers far beyond those of its lesser kin. The tendrils press on, a chill creeping through Baston’s spine, his stomach. His fingers become utterly numb, and the blunderbore falls from his frozen hands.

Rat chuckles, wipes away the blood, and begins to climb again.

But Baston’s done his duty. He’s held the line for long enough.

Taras swoops down like a thunderbolt.

One swipe from the dragon’s mighty claws knocks Rat from the side of the building, smashing him back down to the courtyard below. The dragon lands, its massive wings filling Lanthorn Street. Rat, who was so large and potent a moment ago, is a tiny, fragile thing compared to the dragon.

And tiny, fragile things can easily be broken. Great-Uncle’s jaws close on the ghoul’s torso, and he lifts and shakes, snapping him like a hunting dog kills a rat.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Victory is heralded by a greyish morn, the low clouds laden with sleet. Rasce shivers at the table, and the delicate Lyrixian pastries on his plate are as unappetising as ash. Arax does little to settle his stomach, but he still pours himself a second glass, then a third, before he closes his eyes, looks inward.

Three prisoners. The largest, Lord Rat, is still unconscious out in the courtyard. They’ve manacled the ghoul while Great-Uncle decides what to do with the creature. If the ghouls want their chieftain back, then the Ghierdana shall demand a high price. The stolen weapons of Black Iron, perhaps. It would be good, Rasce thinks, to correct Uncle Artolo’s failure at the last.

The second prisoner is downstairs in the cellar. Rasce stumbles downstairs, the steps warping themselves to conform to his unsteady gait. He will not fall here.

The cellar’s almost empty. Doctor Vorz’s acolytes are down in the harbour, weaving the noose they shall throw around Guerdon’s sea trade. Rasce is alone in the cellar apart from one other living soul.

With a wave of his hand, he causes one of the graves to yawn wide and vomit up its contents.

Carillon Thay.

There’s an ugly purple wound on her forehead, where he struck her last night. She appears unconscious at first, but she’s watching him through half-closed eyelids.

Rasce’s finger probes the spot where she stabbed him. A new stony plate is growing there, a scab like wet concrete. “I did not ask for this,” he says quietly. “Any of this. I did not ask for this gift of sainthood. I did not want to fight you.”

“Fuck you.”

Rasce smiles, thinly. “I knew you would say that. I have learned much from Spar.” He toys with his dragon-tooth. “I thought you would understand, you of all people. You, too, knew the burden of this sainthood. To be a saint without a god. To command such power, and to feel the weight of the New City on your brow. I