Guard Against Dishonor h&f-5 Read online

  the Guards out.

  The cold of the street hit Hawk like a blow, and his vision clouded briefly as

  pain and fatigue caught up with him. He shook his head and pushed the tiredness

  back. He didn't have time for it now. He handed Morgan over to two Constables,

  along with dire threats of what he'd do to them if Morgan escaped, and looked

  round for familiar faces. Fisher appeared out of nowhere, safe and more or less

  sound. They compared wounds for a moment, and then hugged each other carefully.

  Captain Burns came over to join them as they broke apart. He looked bloodied and

  battered and just a little dazed.

  "How many did we lose?" said Hawk.

  Burns scowled. "Five Constables, and Captain Doughty. Could have been worse, I

  suppose. Though I won't tell Doughty's widow that. Did you get Morgan?"

  "Yeah," said Fisher. "Hawk got him."

  And then there was a great crashing roar, and the whole tenement behind them

  collapsed amid screams of rending stone and timber, and the death cries of the

  hundreds of people trapped within. Flying fragments of stone and wood tore

  through the air like shrapnel, and then a thick cloud of smoke billowed out to

  fill the street from end to end.

  Chapter Two

  Going Down

  Hawk pulled and tugged at a stubborn piece of rubble, and bit by bit it slid

  aside. The stone's sharp edges tore at his gloves and the flesh beneath, but he

  hardly felt the pain through the bitter cold and the creeping numbness of utter

  exhaustion. He'd lost track of how long he and the others had been digging

  through the wreckage, searching for survivors. It seemed ages since the

  collapsing pocket dimension had pulled the whole tenement building down with it,

  but the air was still thick with dust that choked the throat and irritated the

  eye. There were still occasional screams or moans or pleas for help from people

  trapped deep within the huge pile of broken stone and timber, which stretched

  across the narrow street and lapped up against the opposite building.

  Hawk supposed he should be grateful that only the one building had come down,

  but he was too numb to feel much of anything now. He looked slowly about him as

  he stopped for a brief rest. The adjoining buildings were slumped and stooped,

  with jagged cracks in their walls, yet somehow holding together. The Guard had

  evacuated them, just in case, and their occupants had willingly joined the dig

  for survivors. Even in the Devil's Hook, people could sometimes be touched by

  tragedy.

  There was no telling how many might still be trapped under the debris. Slum

  landlords didn't keep records on how many desperate people they squeezed into

  each dingy little room. The Guard were trying to keep a count, but most of the

  dead they dug out were too disfigured to be easily identified, and sometimes all

  that could be found of the bodies were scattered bits and pieces. The rescuers

  worked on, fired now and then from their exhaustion by the sudden appearance of

  a living soul, pulled raw and bloodied from the darkness under the rubble.

  Guards and prisoners worked side by side, along with people from the Hook, all

  animosities forgotten in the driving need to save as many as they could.

  Not that everyone had proved so openhearted. Morgan had flatly refused to lift

  so much as a finger to help. Hawk was already half out of his mind with concern

  for the injured, and knew he couldn't spare even one Constable to watch over the

  drug baron. So he just punched Morgan out, manacled the unconscious man to a

  nearby railing and left him there. No one objected, not even his own people. A

  few of them even cheered. Hawk smiled briefly at the memory, and returned to

  work.

  They had no real tools to work with, so they attacked the broken bricks and

  stone and wood with their bare hands, forming human chains to transfer the

  larger pieces. They worked with frantic speed, spurred on by the screams and

  sobbing of those trapped below, but soon found it was better to work slowly and

  carefully rather than risk the debris collapsing in on itself, if a vital

  support was unwittingly removed. Most of the bodies were women and children,

  crushed and broken by the horrid weight. Crammed together in one room sweatshops

  and factories, they never stood a chance. But some survived, sheltered by

  protecting slabs of masonry, and they were reason enough to keep on digging.

  And all the time he worked, Hawk was haunted by a simple, inescapable thought;

  it was all his fault. If he hadn't led the raid on Morgan's factory, the pocket

  dimension wouldn't have collapsed, taking the tenement with it, and all those

  people, all those women and children, would still be alive.

  Eventually the fire brigade arrived, encouraged by the presence of so many

  Guards. Normally they wouldn't have entered the Devil's Hook without an armed

  escort and a written guarantee of hazard pay. They quickly took over the running

  of the operation, and things began to go more smoothly. They set about propping

  up the adjoining buildings, and dealt efficiently with the many water leaks.

  Doctors and nurses arrived from a nearby charity hospital, and began sorting out

  the real emergencies from the merely badly injured. Fisher took the opportunity

  to drag Hawk over to a doctor, and insisted he have his wounds treated. He

  didn't have the strength to argue.

  More volunteers turned up to help, followed by a small army of looters. Hawk

  waited for the doctor to finish the healing spell, and then rose to his feet,

  feeling stiff but a damn sight more lively. He walked over to confront the

  looters, Fisher at his side. The first few took one look at what was coming

  towards them, went very pale, and skidded to a halt. Word passed quickly back,

  and most of the would-be looters decided immediately that they were needed

  somewhere else, very urgently. The ones who couldn't move or think that fast

  found themselves volunteered to help dig through the rubble for survivors.

  The work continued, interrupted increasingly rarely by a sudden shout as someone

  thought they heard a cry for help. Everyone would stop where they were, ears

  straining against the quiet as they tried to locate the faint sound. Sometimes

  there was nothing but the quiet, and work would slowly resume, but sometimes the

  cry would come again, and then everyone would work together, sweating and

  straining against the stubborn stone and wood until the survivors could be

  gently lifted free. There were hundreds of dead in the rubble, and only a few

  dozen living, but each new life snatched from the crushing stone gave the

  exhausted volunteers new will to carry on. Nurses moved among the workers with

  cups of hot soup and mulled ale, and an encouraging word for those who looked as

  though they needed it. And still more volunteers came to help, drawn from the

  surrounding area by the scale of the tragedy.

  More Guards arrived, expecting riots, chaos, and mass looting, and were shocked

  to find so many people from the Hook working together to help others. Fisher set

  some of them to blocking off the street, to keep out sightseers and ghouls who'd

  just get in the way, and put the rest to work digging in the ruins, so that
<
br />   those who'd been working the longest could get some rest. Some of the Guard

  Constables weren't too keen on dirtying their hands with manual labor, but one

  cold glare from Hawk was enough to convince them to shut up and get on with it.

  It was at this point that the local gang leader, Hammer, arrived, along with

  twenty or so of his most impressive-looking bullies, and insisted on talking to

  the man in charge. Hawk went over to meet him, secretly glad of an excuse for a

  break—and a little guilty at feeling that way. So he wasn't in the best of moods

  when the gang leader delivered his ultimatum. Hammer was a medium-height,

  well-padded man in his early twenties. He dressed well, if rather flashily, and

  had the kind of face that fell naturally into a sneer.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing here?" he said flatly. "This is my

  territory, and no one works here without paying me. No one. So either pay up,

  right here, where everyone can see it, or I'll be forced to order my people to

  shut you down. Nothing happens in my territory without my permission."

  Hawk looked at him. "There are injured people here who need our help. Some of

  them will die without it."

  "That's your problem."

  Hawk nodded, and kneed Hammer in the groin. All the color went out of the gang

  leader's face, and he dropped to his knees, his hands buried between his thighs.

  "You're under arrest," said Hawk. He looked hard at the shocked bullies. "The

  rest of you, get over there and start digging, or I'll personally cut you all

  off at the knees."

  The bullies looked at him, looked at their fallen leader, and decided he just

  might mean it. They shrugged more or less in unison, and moved over to work in

  the ruins. The local people raised a brief cheer for Hawk, surprising him and

  them, and then they all got back to work. The gang leader was left lying huddled

  in a ball, handcuffed by his ankle to a railing.

  The hours dragged on, and the search turned up fewer and fewer survivors. The

  fire brigade's engineers set up supports for the adjoining buildings; nothing

  elaborate, but enough to keep them secure until the builders could be called in.

  People began to drift away, too exhausted or dispirited to continue. Hawk sent

  most of his Guards back to Headquarters with Morgan and his people, the crates

  of chacal now carefully labeled and numbered, and the gang leader Hammer, under

  Captain Burns's direction. But Hawk stayed on, and Fisher stayed with him. Hawk

  didn't know whether he stayed because he felt he was still needed or because he

  was punishing himself, but he knew he couldn't leave until he was sure there was

  no one still alive under the wreckage. Someone cried out they'd heard something,

  and once again everything came to a halt as the diggers listened, holding their

  breath, trying to hear a faint cry for help over the beating of their own

  hearts. One of the men yelled, and everyone converged on a dark, narrow shaft

  that fell away into the depths of the ruins. One of the diggers dropped a small

  stone down the shaft. They all listened hard, but no one heard it hit bottom.

  "Sounded like a child," said the man who first raised the alarm. "Pretty quiet.

  Must be trapped at the bottom of the shaft somewhere."

  "We daren't try to widen the hole," said Fisher. "This whole area is touchy as

  hell. One wrong move, and the shaft could collapse in on itself."

  "We can't just leave the child there," said a woman dully, kneeling at the edge

  of the shaft. "Someone could go down on a rope, and fetch it up."

  "Not someone," said Hawk. "Me. Get me a length of rope and a lantern."

  He started stripping off his cloak and furs. Fisher moved in close beside him.

  "You don't have to do this, Hawk."

  "Yes I do."

  "You couldn't have known this would happen."

  "I should have thought, instead of just barging straight in."

  "That shaft isn't stable. It could collapse at any time."

  "I know that. Keep an eye on my furs and my axe, would you? This is Haven, after

  all."

  He stood by the shaft in his shirt and trousers, looking down into the darkness,

  and shivered suddenly, not entirely from the cold. He didn't like dark, enclosed

  places, particularly underground, and the whole situation reminded him

  uncomfortably of a bad experience he'd once had down a mine. He didn't have to

  go down the shaft. There were any number of others ready to volunteer. But if he

  didn't do it, he'd always believe he should have.

  Someone came back with a length of rope, and Fisher fastened one end round his

  waist. Someone else tied the other end to a sturdy outcropping of broken stone,

  and Hawk and Fisher took turns tugging on the rope to make sure it was secure.

  One of the men gave him a lantern, and he held it out over the shaft. The pale

  golden light didn't penetrate far into the darkness. He listened, but couldn't

  hear anything. The hole itself was about three feet in diameter and looked

  distinctly unsafe. Hawk shrugged. It wouldn't get any safer, no matter how long

  he waited. He sat down on the edge, very slowly and very carefully, swung his

  legs over the side, and then lowered himself into the darkness, bracing his back

  and his knees against the sides of the shaft. He took a deep breath and let it

  out, and then inch by inch he made his way down into the darkness, the lantern

  resting uncomfortably on his chest.

  Jagged edges of stone and wood cut at him viciously as he descended, and the

  circle of daylight overhead grew smaller and smaller. He moved slowly down in

  his pool of light, stopping now and again to call out to the child below, but

  there was never any reply. He pressed on, cursing the narrow confines around him

  as they bowed in and out, and soon came to the bottom of the shaft. He held up

  the lantern and looked around him. Rough spikes of broken wood and stone

  protruded from every side, and a dozen openings led off into the honeycomb of

  wreckage. Most were too small or too obviously unsafe for him to try, but one

  aperture led into a narrow tunnel barely two feet high. Hawk called out to the

  child, but there was only the silence and his own harsh breathing. He looked

  back up the main shaft, but all he could see was darkness. He was on his own. He

  looked again at the narrow tunnel, cursed again briefly, and got down on his

  hands and knees.

  The rope played out behind him as he wriggled his way through the tunnel

  darkness in his narrow pool of light, stopping now and then to manoeuvre past

  outcroppings from the tunnel walls. The child had to be around here somewhere.

  He couldn't have come all this way for nothing. He thought briefly about the

  sheer weight of wreckage pressing from above, and his skin went cold. The roof

  of the tunnel bulged down ahead of him, and he had to lie on his back and force

  himself past the obstruction an inch at a time, pulling the lantern behind. The

  unyielding stone pressed against his chest like a giant hand trying to crush the

  breath out of him. He breathed out, emptying his lungs, and slowly squeezed

  past.

  In the end, he found the child by bumping into her. He'd just got past the

  obstruction when his head hit something soft and yielding. His f
irst thought was

  that he'd run into some kind of animal down in the dark with him, and his

  imagination conjured up all kinds of unpleasantness before he got it back under

  control. He squirmed over onto his stomach, wishing briefly that he'd brought

  his axe, and then stopped as he saw her, lying still and silent on the tunnel

  floor. She looked to be about five or six years old, covered in dirt and blood,

  but still breathing strongly. Hawk spoke to her, but she didn't respond, even

  when he tapped her sharply on the shoulder. He pulled himself along beside her,

  and saw for the first time that one of her legs was pinned between two great

  slabs of stone, holding her firmly just below the ankle.

  Hawk put his lantern down and pushed cautiously at the slabs, but they wouldn't

  budge. He took hold of the girl's shoulders and pulled until his arms ached, but

  she didn't budge either. The stones weren't going to give her up that easily.

  Hawk let go of her, and tried to think. The air was full of dust, and he coughed

  hard to try and clear it from his throat. The side of his face grew

  uncomfortably warm from having the lantern so close, and he moved it a bit

  further away. Shadows leapt alarmingly in the cramped tunnel and then were still

  again. He scowled, and worried his lower lip between his teeth. He had to get

  the child out of there. The tunnel could collapse at any time, bringing tons of

  stone and timber crashing down on her. And him too, for that matter. But there

  was no way he could persuade the stone slabs to give up their hold on her foot.

  He had no tools to work with, and even if he had, there wasn't enough room to

  apply any leverage. No, there was only one way to get the child out. Tears stung

  his eyes as the horror of it clenched at his gut, but he knew he had to do it.

  He didn't have any choice in the matter.

  He squirmed and wriggled as best he could in the confined space, and finally

  managed to draw the knife from his boot and slide his leather belt out of his

  trousers. There was a good edge on the blade. It would do the job. He took a

  close look at the stone slabs where they held the child's foot, checking if

  there was room enough to work, but he already knew the answer. There was room.

  He was just putting it off. He looped his belt around the girl's leg, close up