It was cooler here with the walls much closer together shading the steps that twisted up the crooked alley. A bit of moss even clung tenaciously to a few cracks in the walls.
The steps were littered with bodies—dead bodies, others nearly dead, and still more trying to die. They moaned, cried, screamed. The reek of decomposition hit him like a brick to the face. Brand clenched his teeth and breathed as slowly as possible through his teeth. Behind him, he heard the machine suit’s heavy footfalls.
Still, Brand hesitated. Pruritic plague. It made his own skin crawl as he watched one poor woman scratch and scratch until the patch of skin tore beneath her jagged fingernails.
One emaciated man nearest to Brand seemed less tattered than the rest, with his skin covered in sores that didn’t seem infected yet. The man’s distinctive hairstyle, with the sides of his head shaved, and a goatee worn long with braids, was blatantly foreign, though Brand wasn’t sure where from. Somewhere out east, perhaps, Brand thought.
The man’s strange grey eyes met Brand’s; then he lifted a wineskin to his lips, drank deeply, and sank into a dejected stupor.
Brand glanced back and saw that the machine suit had sprinted past the alley. But the stomping halted as the man in the suit realized Brand had vanished. The gladiator only had a moment before the machine suit operator figured out where he’d gone and came ploughing down this alley in hot pursuit.
Brand took a long, steadying breath and gagged. So long as he didn’t touch any of them, he’d be alright, he reassured himself. He examined the still-living wretches—most seemed lost in their private worlds, tortured but contained.
Brand glanced behind him and saw the machine suit catch sight of him and surge down the alley after him. Wincing, Brand lunged forward, trying to pick his way through them at speed, trying to ignore them.
A woman lurched up and caught Brand by the front of his shirt. Brand let out an involuntary yelp and gagged at the smell of rotting, infected flesh. The dying woman’s face and hands were covered with long, oozing wounds. Pus and blood smeared across Brand’s skin wherever she touched him as she clawed at Brand’s face, neck, and arms in a crazed flurry.
He shoved the woman into a pile of bloated dead bodies and ran the rest of the way down the alley, no longer caring if he stepped on anyone.
At the end of the alley, the machine suit caught up to Brand. It lunged forward and smashed the gladiator in the gut, sending him sliding into a pile of decomposing bodies. Fueled by disgust and panic, Brand jumped up, ran at the wall, planted a foot against it, and used it to spring into the air and onto the machine suit.
The suit flailed its great claws, trying to rid itself of its pest. But Brand hung on, fingers scrabbled around at the base of the helmet until his fingers found a switch. He punched the release for the faceplate. The shield swished open, revealing an angry and surprised man with a bulbous nose. Brand pulled his fist back to punch the man, but the suit spun violently and crashed into the wall. The force of it sent Brand flying off the suit and skidding down the wall. The machine reached down and picked Brand up by the ankle. It raised its other claw to strike Brand.
Dangling upside down, Brand managed to grab the claw as it careened toward him. He heard the gears scrape as he pushed, bulging muscles straining against the powerful machine’s pistons. Somewhere down the twisted alley, he heard someone shouting.
“Look at that! Who is that man?”
Another: “That’s impossible!”
The man in the machine suit seemed to agree. He looked confused. The claw withdrew and Brand let go.
Brand curled up to grab at his boots, unlacing them as fast as he could. He pulled at the laces, and then, as the claw came back for another swing, Brand loosened the last lace and fell barefoot to the cobbled street.
The machine suit tossed his boots aside.
Brand slipped under the arm of the machine suit and leapt onto its back with a grunt. Tired muscles screaming, he hauled himself up to the faceplate once more. This time, he didn’t hesitate. His fist flew at the man’s face again and again.
Brand’s hand came away bloody before the man in the machine suit sputtered, “Stop! Please!”
Brand seized the man’s throat and squeezed. “Get out of the suit,” he growled.
Blood streaming from his now broken bulbous nose, the man nodded. Brand released the man. The suit hissed, then a series of clicks sounded from the many seams. Brand hauled off the heavy metal chest plate as it released and threw it to the side so that the man inside could clamor out.
Brand immediately grabbed him by the shoulders and pinned him to the wall.
“Who are you? Why are you trying to kill me?” Brand snarled.
The man hesitated a moment, then tightly pressed his quivering lips together.
Brand slammed the man’s head into the wall. The man’s eyes crossed.
“Why are you trying to kill me?” he yelled again.
“Alright, alright!” the man sputtered, dabbing at his swollen nose. “I was hired by a kashmari who bet heavily on your last fight and lost.”
“Give me a name.”
“B’alam Nehn.”
I should let Kushchai handle this, Brand thought. He released the man, who collapsed to the ground with his hands still half-raised to his face. Brand fixed him with a savage glare, then pointed a long, blood-covered finger at him. “If you come after me again, you’ll be dead. Do you understand?”
The man nodded, trembling. Brand knew that look. He’d seen it on the face of every would-be assassin over the years. It said the man was thinking that if this gladiator could survive an attack by a machine suit, could anything kill him?
Something would eventually, Brand knew. He wasn’t about to go without a fight, though.
Brand took a look at the suit, thinking for a moment. Then he flipped it over onto its back and ripped out a couple of copper-plated tubes. They hissed as they wobbled, steam leaking from the ends. Finally, he hooked his fingers around a small, black cooling unit and yanked, dislodging it from the rest of the suit.
Brand gave the man one last threatening glare, then spun on his heel, wires trailing from the cooling unit as the gladiator strode away.
A Note from Jillian
I decided to upload Muspell’s Sons in its entirety to my website to test whether an author can be successful without charging for their ebooks. This is a completely free fantasy ebook available to read online and I do not use ads to support this website since I personally despise ads. I make no money off of this free fantasy ebook. If you like the book, please consider leaving a review for me on Goodreads. That will greatly help more people find my stories. Thanks!
