A mysterious stranger [not like this is a cliche or anything...]
There was a locked door at the top of the stairs. Emily kicked the door. A leather clad figure appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
"The Protector of Calendara’s little angel. It’s my lucky day." said the raider. The dust mask and goggles gave him a demonic air. He was carrying an energy weapon and a spiked ball on a chain that he swung menacingly as he advanced up the stairs. Emily kicked the door - he was so close that she could see the dints and the rust on the blue metal surface of the filter mask.
"Emily." Jocastra whimpered, attempting to sandwich herself between Emily and the wall. Emily kicked the door; the man reached a gloved hand for Jocastra’s arm. Jocastra was shaking.
Emily saw the hand moving towards her friend and it seemed that everything was slowing down. The gloved hand was reaching; she could see the tubes leading from the filter mask and they seemed to her like black snakes that any moment could come to life and strangle... The tubes began to thrash. The raider’s hand stopped moving. The tubes were twisting, unravelling, tightening. The raider clawed at his throat making inarticulate noises as the air tubes wound around and around his neck. He dropped the energy weapon and the ball rolled down the steps, pulling the chain and handle with it. Jocastra’s face was drained of colour - she was watching the raider with terrified fascination as his eyes bulged under the goggles and where the mask met them, she could see his face turning from purple to black.
She made a small, inarticulate noise as Emily seized his energy weapon from where it had fallen and blew the inside door to pieces. "Come on." Jocastra was mesmerised by the dying raider. Emily yanked her arm and reluctantly she followed. The tubes went limp; freed of all direction and intelligence - the raider toppled backwards and tumbled down the stairs. She heard his head crack on the stone floor at the bottom.
"Is he dead?" asked Jocastra, looking backwards down the stairs.
"Yes. Now do you see why I have to go?" said Emily, her voice sounded tense and her face as pale and afraid as Jocastra’s. She looked stunned and the spent energy weapon was shaking. "I can’t control it; I have to leave before I hurt someone."
She pushed open the trapdoor to the roof and dropped the energy weapon down the stairs. It clattered across the stone and landed on top of the dead raider. Emily climbed out onto the flat white roof of the house and looked across the rooftops towards the Protector’s residence. The town of Calendara had been built in its entirety by the first Protector and had changed little since then apart from the addition of some greenhouses in their own enclosure. The town was arranged on a concentric grid with the widest roads towards the edge and the narrowest around the Protector’s residence in the centre. It was the only building above a standardised three storeys in height. Narrow side streets joined the main roads and broke the buildings into large blocks of 6 or more houses arranged back-to-back. In this district, however, the houses were broken up further still with a large block of 12 houses separated by narrow alleys, just large enough for two pedestrians to pass and just wide enough to prevent jumping from roof to roof. These buildings had two doors - the front door facing the street and the back door facing the alley. The roofs had pyramidal skylights in their centre that admitted light but appeared opaque from the outside.
A open topped jeep with a crude battering ram attached to the front was speeding along the street from which they had come. Emily dropped onto her knees, extended her hand and helped Jocastra through the trapdoor.
"They’ll find the motorcycle; we’ve got to get into the other street."
Jocastra huddled against the rampart surmounting the roof, her frightened eyes watching the flashes of gun fire erupting from the surrounding streets. Emily found a folded ladder nestling against the rampart. Jocastra watched her peering into the empty alley between the backs of the buildings and then attempting to maneouvre the ladder to bridge the gap between the roofs.
"Jocastra." she called, clinging to the ladder. Jocastra pulled her knees to her chin and shook. The ladder clanked against the rampart of the building behind. Emily hit the ladder with her fist and it flexed. She put her foot on it and then stood in the centre. Acutely aware of the revving of an engine and the shouts from the street, she attempted to coax Jocastra across the ladder. A shot exploded against the rampart causing an explosion of dust and plaster. Jocastra flattened herself against the ladder and clung there.
Emily heard the jeep’s engine start. She peered over the wall of the neighbouring house into the alley and saw the jeep pass the end, heading down the side street at the end of the block into the street onto which this house faced. She put out her hand and Jocastra screwed up her eyes and extended her fingers. The wind was rising, whistling down the alley and raising small dust devils as it went. Sand pattered against Emily’s goggles; the sky was starless now dark but for the flashes of gunfire. The ladder was shaking with the force of the wind.
Jocastra rolled off the ladder and cowered against the rampart, her eyes screwed up against the sand. Emily could see the dust blowing across the rooftops. The wind was becoming a physical force and she could no longer see the Protector’s palace through the growing storm. The building shook beneath them as the raiders blew open the door of the building.
"Jocastra, we’ve got to get off the roof." she yelled through the howling wind."Keep away from the skylight."
She had no idea if Jocastra could hear her. She dragged the ladder across the roof, struggling against the wind and pushed it out onto the roof of the house next door. It bucked and shuddered with the force of the wind.
"Jocastra." Emily yelled. Jocastra staggered across the roof, trying to shield her eyes with her coat. Emily crawled out onto the shaking ladder; she could hear the scraping of the metal moving on the stone rampart. "Jocastra, hold the ladder." Emily ducked beneath the rampart out of the wind and peered through the gap.
In the murky darkness, she could see the foggy shape of Jocastra turning around and she heard the thud of the trapdoor. The light pouring out reflected opaquely off the flying dust. A figure emerged from the trapdoor. Jocastra’s scream was lost in the shrieking, gusting wind. Emily heard the raider shouting and gesturing.
"Jocastra." Emily shouted, poking her head over the rampart.
She saw a gun fire and for a moment thought the raider had shot Jocastra. Then she realised he was signalling through the sandstorm. Emily saw the raider grasping Jocastra’s arm. She was screaming. Then, Emily thought she saw a second dark figure appear behind the first. The raider stiffened and stood for a moment, swaying in the wind. The second figure moved slightly and the raider toppled backwards through the trapdoor and disappeared out of sight.
"Jocastra." Emily yelled. The newcomer paused at the sound and raised its arms in an open and well-known gesture of surrender. Emily assumed that he was one of the guards but the silhouette seemed wrong and even her unusually acute eyesight struggled in the gloom of the storm. Emily nervously clambered back across the swaying ladder to the roof that she had just left.
Jocastra’s rescuer was not one of the Protector’s guards but a strangely dressed figure carrying a piece of archaic-looking weaponry. He had run the raider through and the sword was dripping blood into the shifting dust on the roof. Jocastra was huddled nearby, shielding her eyes from the stinging sand.
He turned as Emily dropped, cat-like from the rampart onto the roof and glanced through the open trapdoor - blood was splattered on the walls of the staircase where the raider had fallen and his broken body lay on the carpet in the room below. His face was almost completely obscured; he wore a long, charcoal grey coat and had pulled the collar up to shield his chin, mouth and nose from the dust. He wore a strange three-cornered hat and had what appeared to be a single spectacle lens, swimming with colours and patterns, in front of one of his eyes. The exposed eye, she saw to be a distinctive lime green - so bright that it appeared to glow from within. Strands of silvery hair wafted across his face.
Emily felt an oddly familiar sensation but he was unknown to her. "You saved..."
"Yes." his reply was dismissive and partly lost in the wind. He had an unfamiliar and quite distinctive accent that made Jocastra look up abruptly.
"Who...?"
"Quinton Harrington." he glanced away from her, across the rooftops to where shots still flashed in the streets. "This is not really the place for introductions. I suggest that we get off the roof."
He descended back through the trapdoor.
"But the raiders..."
"Deceased. I knew that the hours of ceremonial combat that my father forced me to undertake would come in handy one day" his faintly amused voice drifted back to them.
Emily crouched next to Jocastra and nudged her. "Come on." she said gently and forced her way through the wind to the trapdoor. The ladder clattered off the ramparts and disappeared. The wind was so strong that Emily was almost blown over. She struggled the trapdoor shut and the wailing of the wind subsided.
The walls were splattered with blood. Jocastra put out her hand towards the wall and then whimpered with horror as she opened her eyes and her fingers trailed bloody smears across the plaster.
"Dammit." said the young man, unhooking the lens from over his ear, shaking it and then peering at it. He folded the metal earpiece over the lens and dropped it into the pocket of his coat. His sword dripped blood onto the carpet. He seemed momentarily oblivious to the presence of Emily and Jocastra.
Jocastra saw the prostate body at the bottom of the stairs and shrieked. Emily kicked the body away with her boot so that Jocastra didn’t have to step over it. Jocastra watched Emily rolling it away with a look of horrified fascination. The young man looked up. He had folded his collar down and Emily could see his face. It was beautiful; beautiful, haughty and terribly proud. His hair was cut raggedly at his collar and was so fair that it seemed to be the silver of moonlight without even a hint of yellow. His skin was as pale. The only colour to his face was a dusting of oddly regular chocolatey freckles, his bright green eyes and the long lashes that framed them.
Emily watched him walk to the window that opened onto the inside garden. He tilted his head to look up through the skylight and then appeared to decide that he was unable to see anything. He sat down on a chair by the window and began to clean the sword. Through the noise of the wind, Emily noticed that the explosions of gunfire were becoming less frequent.
"Your guards appear to be regaining control of the town; we should be able to leave presently." he said, wiping the congealing blood off the blade.
Jocastra was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, her eyes flicking nervously between the dead body and the young man seated in the chair. Her clothes were dulled by dust and her feet were coated in sand.
"Are you a fighter then, a soldier?" Emily asked, walking over to him. He looked up and sheathed the sword.
"In a manner of speaking," Emily remained looking at him expectantly. "I would regard myself a scholar."
"What sort of scholar?"
"A polymath."
"Do you know anything about engineering?"
"Why?" he asked, narrowing his eyes with suspicion. Emily retrieved the model gate from her jacket pocket and handed it to him. "This is a new gate for Calendara, I presume. Interesting. Is this yours?" Emily nodded. The gate ponderously inched open and shut as slowly. He slipped his finger under the gate as it closed and opened the frame of the gate in which the mechanism was concealed. "You know that this strut will need replacing reasonably regularly and if not..." he moved the strut with a nail, opened the gate and then watched it snap down onto his finger. He gifted her with an expression that looked to be a combination between a grimace and a triumphant sneer.
"Yes. I did think of a way around it but the Protector deemed it too expensive and said that he would replace the strut. I was looking for another means of solving the problem but there is now no time."
"So it appears." he said, evidently thinking of the broken gates. Emily did not correct him. "I would need to examine the existing gates in order to assist you but I am merely passing through." He handed the model back to her.
"What are you doing here in Calendara?"
"I am running an errand for a friend." His gaze drifted away towards the window. Emily could no longer hear the sound of gunfire. "The exchange of hostilities seems to have ceased. We should return your friend home."
"Jocastra." Emily pointed at Jocastra who was shivering with shock on the stairs and spasmodically attempting to rub the blood off her hands onto her dress."She is Jocastra; I am Emily."
Quinton Harrington descended the stairs to the front door. "Are you ok?" Emily asked Jocastra. "I think the raiders have gone now."
"I’m alright. Thank you, Emily. I feel safe with you around. You always know what to do." said Jocastra. Her reverence made Emily nervous; she had always been sure that one day she would disappoint her.
Emily shrugged. "Not really - you almost got kidnapped; I feel responsible. Mind the blood!" She warned whilst they descended the stairs to the ground floor. Jocastra squealed as her bare feet barely missed a puddle of blood. Quinton spun around at the noise.
"It’s not your fault, Emily. You try so hard to protect me." Jocastra said as he opened the door. The duststorm had decreased in ferocity and particles of sand eddied and danced in the light from the house. The glass wall onto the internal garden had been broken and dust drifted through the opening onto the plants. There had been three raiders altogether, Emily noted. One had died near the doorway and did not appear to have put up much of a fight. The glass shards covering his body suggested that the window had been broken after his death, probably by the second raider who lay half in the flowerbed and half across the paving stones in the garden. Emily picked up the first raider’s discarded energy weapon on her way out.
The jeep was still parked outside in the street. "They’ve left their transport; how considerate of them." Quinton Harrington’s voice floated back to them through the whistling wind.
Emily led Jocastra through the whirling sand. Her eyes were screwed shut and her silky black hair blew across her face. "Crouch down in the back. I’ll go up front." Emily shouted over the roar of the storm and the pattering of the sand. She helped Jocastra into the rear of the vehicle and then clambered to the front where Quinton Harrington was attempting to hold onto his hat in the driving seat. "Have you driven one of these things before?" Emily yelled.
He looked around and blinked strands of silver hair out of his eyes. "No."
"Do you know the way to the Protector’s residence?"
"In a general sense."
"Right. Shift seats." She climbed into the driver’s seat and crunched the jeep’s gears.