The ocean came into view as the trio descended the hill, and the harbor was now visible between the houses, which were considerably older in this neighborhood than in the Oke T’Noon or up by the Caramess. The air was clean and quick here; it enlivened their step. After a short while the domestic dwellings gave way to docklands: warehouses, cranes, and silos reared around them. But the area was by no means deserted. The workers here were not so easily cowed as the occupants of the Kesparate above, and many were leaving off their labors to see what this rumpus was all about. They were a far more homogenized group than Gentle had seen elsewhere, most a cross between Oethac and Homo sapiens, massive, even brutish men who in sufficient numbers could certainly trounce Quaisoir’s battalion. Gentle hoisted Huzzah up to ride on his back as they joined this congregation, fearful she’d be trampled if he didn’t. A few of the dockers gave her a smile, and several stood aside to let her mount secure a better place in the crowd. By the time they came within sight of the troops again they were thoroughly concealed.
A small contingent of the soldiers had been charged to keep onlookers from straying too close to the field of action, and this they were attempting to do, but they were vastly outnumbered, and as the crowd swelled it steadily pushed the cordon towards the site of the hostilities, a warehouse some thirty yards down the street, which had apparently been laid siege to. Its walls were pitted with bullet strikes, and its lower windows smoked. The besieging troops—who were not dressed showily like Quaisoir’s battalion, but in the monochrome Gentle had seen paraded in L’Himby—were presently hauling bodies out of the building. Some were on the second story, pitching dead men— and a couple who still had life in them—out of the windows onto the bleeding heap below. Gentle remembered Beatrix. Was this cairn building one of the marks of the Autarch’s hand?
“You shouldn’t be seeing this, angel,” Gentle told Huz-zah, and tried to lift her off his shoulders. But she held fast, taking fistfuls of his hair as security.
“I want to see,” she said. “I’ve seen it with Daddy, lots of times.”
“Just don’t get sick on my head,” Gentle warned.
“I won’t,” she said, outraged at the suggestion.
There were fresh brutalities unfolding below. A survivor had been dragged from the building and was kicked to the ground a few yards from Quaisoir’s vehicle, the doors and windows of which were still closed. Another was defending himself as best he could from bayonet jabs, yelling in defiance as his tormentors encircled him. But everything came to a sudden halt with the appearance on the warehouse roof of a man wearing little more than ragged underwear, who opened his arms like a soul in search of martyrdom and proceeded to harangue the assembly below.
“That’s Athanasius!” Pie murmured in astonishment.
The mystif was far sharper sighted than Gentle, who had to squint hard to confirm the identification. It was indeed Father Athanasius, his beard and hair longer than ever, his hands, brow, and flank running with blood.
“What the hell’s he doing up there,” Gentle said, “giving a sermon?”
Athanasius’ address wasn’t simply directed at the troops and their victims on the cobblestones below. He repeatedly turned his head towards the crowd, shouting in their direction too. Whether he was issuing accusations, prayers, or a call to arms, the words were lost to the wind, however. Soundless, his display looked faintly absurd and undoubtedly suicidal. Rifles were already being raised below, to put him in their sights.
But before a shot could be fired the first prisoner, who’d been kicked to his knees close to Quaisoir’s vehicle, slipped custody. His captors, distracted by Athanasius’ performance, were slow to respond, and by the time they did so their victim was already dashing towards the crowd, ignoring quicker escape routes to do so. The crowd began to part, anticipating the man’s arrival in its midst, but the troops behind him were already turning their muzzles his way. Realizing they intended to fire in the direction of the crowd, Gentle dropped to his haunches, yelling for Huzzah to clamber down. This time she didn’t protest. As she slipped from his shoulders several shots were fired. He glanced up and through the .mesh of bodies caught sight of Athanasius falling back, as if struck, and disappearing behind the parapet around the roof.