Rise of the Dust Child

By James Young

An age has passed since the fall of the old world and the rise of the malignant Dust people. Despite the terrors of this new age, humanity lingers within the wreckage of civilization, bound together only by the promise of a better existence in the next life. Yet not all are satisfied by this stagnant dogma.

Within the ramshackle and smoggy city of Fort Palmer, eight-year-old Doran Osrik and his new friend, Alena, stand apart from the human Union, struggling alone to regain their races lost glory. Unfortunately the unquiet dead and forces of faith do not take kindly to those who try to fix a broken world. As Doran and Alenas quest to save the future leads each of them down a dark and ruinous path, they are cast apart across the lands of Limbo where they must overcome the monstrous dusters and the fear within themselves if they ever hope to see each other again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524634353

James Young

James Young was born in Oldham. He has tried his hand at a number of careers, including working in a cotton mill and as a car park attendant. In the early 80s he abandoned a promising academic future at Oxford to become Nico's piano player, after which he wrote Nico, Songs They Never Play on the Radio - a biographical account of the eight years he spent with the doomed Warhol chanteuse. He lives in Oxford.

Book preview

Chapter One

A Lesson in Fire

In my days of hiding in this realm of rancid sand and glowering dusters, I’ve realised that this is the fate she wanted to protect me from. I should have listened to her teachings. If I had, then maybe I could have saved her…

Tap-Tap, the ash petrel rapped its beak against the unyielding shell of the knuckledragger. But though the once-proud war machine was now little more than a torso and a few battered limbs, it still guarded its contents jealously from the scavenger’s plundering gullet. The ragged bird cawed in dismay at the muffled scent of meat, lingering under the layers of stubborn iron. It hopped along the rusted legs of the mechanical knight, all but devoured by the grey sands, and across the defunct cannon arm until it reached the titanic chestplate. "Tap-tap," the bird struck the cracked glass of the driver’s porthole and tilted its featherless head to the side. But nothing stirred in the iron coffin.

Though mankind knew this desolate land as the Dead Wastes of Limbo, it was known only as a place of famine by the creatures that feed on corpses, for carrion is hard to devour when it has a tendency to fight back, and insult was piled upon appetite when a necrotic morsel was trapped inside the frame of one of these metal cans. Humans always died in the most inconsiderate ways.

Grong!

The bird looked up, its yellowed eyes glinting with hunger as the penance bell rang out across the polar desert, signalling the prospect of some decent food. With a beat of its scruffy wings the scavenger vaulted up into the winds to join the rest of its kind, its outline quickly absorbed into the churning hurricane of angry shrieks and cackles. The sky darkened as a canopy of feathers smothered out the bleached sunlight. Beneath the maelstrom of hunger, the winds swept another sheath of grit over the knuckledragger. As the grim flurry passed, a withered hand pressed against the porthole and scraped a set of nails along the bruised glass. After a bout of scratching, the digits sunk back into the bowels of their corroded tomb.

Squabbling and snapping at one another with nicked beaks, the petrel horde swarmed ravenously towards the call to feed. They flew over frosted mountains, swept across dusty fields riven with veins of stagnating lava, and wove through serrated gullies carved out by ancient oceans. Wherever they flew, they kept a wary eye to the ground, for in the world below, packs of sallow creatures lurched rapidly across the arid landscape, surging towards the call as surely and implacably as the birds. Though the earthbound ghouls wore the shell of humanity, these beasts were more akin to the dirt and sands of the wasteland than they were to actual living creatures. These were the shadows of mankind, with bodies riddled with mechanical parts and decaying flesh, and their blackened eyes nothing but hungry voids. These were the Dust people, the primal incarnations of the merciless appetite of the desert.

The flock traced the wilted creatures’ path towards the Drakewall, a vast scar of trenches and turrets carved into the barren earth. From this bastion erupted streams of foul smoke that choked the land with the reek of brimstone and blotted the sky with streaks of black. Whole valleys and fields of artillery pointed out into the Dead Wastes, their weary sights trained upon any suggestion of gristled flesh, or the glint of soulless pupils upon the skyline. The petrels whipped through the man-made cloud, for their eyes were accustomed to the caustic sting of human toxins, just as their ears were numbed to the incessant rattle and crack of gunfire. In the battlefield below, swathes of the corpse-like reavers were disintegrated by barrages of cannon shot, and ripped asunder by machine guns. The survivors clambered over the defences to wreak as much carnage as possible before terrified soldiers could shoot enough lead to put them down for good. Their assault momentarily dissuaded, the Dust people scampered back from the wall like a retreating wave of blasted flesh, their numbers bolstered by the soldiers recruited by their killing spree.

The birds flew on, undeterred, dancing beyond man’s warlike reach upon the frigid winds. Passing at last through the dark haze, their prize came into sight. The continent of Limbo was littered with the iron skeletons of civilisation, but none of those feeble scrapheaps could compare to the forts of The Union. Those few human settlements that still clung to survival in this age of decay had done so through the construction of immense walls, their final line of defence against the horrors that lurked in the wasteland.

The penance bell was ringing out over Fort Palmer, a ramshackle city soaked in smog and crammed within a gargantuan kettle of time-stained metal. Interspersed through the layers of rickety iron were a few battered memories of a long lost world; cyclopean portholes stared out blindly towards the ravaged horizon, and dented keels clung to the walls like rusted fins. Vessels that had once ploughed bravely through the seas of the old world were now beached forever, tideless prisoners cannibalised to fit humanity’s needs. Now not a soul that called the fort their home could remember the faintest sight nor smell of the oceans, for the endless desert beyond their walls was as arid and shrivelled as the hollow creatures that stalked it. In millennia past, the petrels’ ancestors had feasted upon the raw bounty of salty waters, gorging themselves upon the bloody multitude of life that endured the frozen base of the world. The cold still remained, but the creatures that struggled through it were but a twisted reflection of what they once were.

The flock thwarted Palmer’s barbed ramparts with ease – their silhouettes darted across the sky as their fleeting forms were picked out by the fort’s blinking searchlights. The bell rang out again as hunger clawed through their tender guts. They warmed their feathers in the smokey air that congealed atop the factory districts, and swooped low across the holding pens, which were nothing but a festering swamp of manure and reeking fur. The doughy-fleshed mokuses, tamed and slovenly descendants of fur seals, ploughed through the fields of muck on their six stubby paws, their bloated mouths slopping through the mud for roots and grubs. Between them ran the spiny forms of the kratten; the pilfering rodents were ever on the lookout for any scraps of food that the slow-witted livestock had overlooked. The petrels flew haughtily over the corralled beasts, for they couldn’t afford to settle for such meagre sustenance when a far-tastier prize was being readied further on.

Their goal in sight, a thousand clawed feet pattered to a halt upon the circle of rooftops surrounding the fort’s central plaza. The petrels bustled cautiously amongst the bird traps laid by hungry natives, and pecked at the grey dribbles left in the rain-collection troughs. Far below them, in the stinking streets, their meal was being seasoned with spittle and rage.

Oblivious to the ring of beady eyes scheming above him, Doran Osrik squeezed his mother’s hand. The great bell had finally ceased its clanging, but the ominous tone still resounded through the boy’s mind.

Do we have to watch this, Ma? he said, barely loud enough to be heard over the angry crowd.

Marta Osrik turned her deep dark gaze to her cowering son and noted the shimmer of fear in his puddle-brown eyes. Perhaps he’s too young to see this, she thought. But if not now, then when? She knew she had to teach him such things early. How else is he to survive by himself?

Yes, we do, she said. "And don’t let me catch you covering those eyes. I want you to see what The Union does to traitors."

Doran’s brow furrowed in effort as he struggled to find another excuse to avoid what was sure to be a terrifying spectacle, But we’ll be late for school. It’s my first day and I’ll get in trouble if I miss anything!

Marta coughed roughly and looked down into his anxious face. "School has its place, but this is one lesson you’ll learn better outside the classroom. Now hush. It’s starting soon."

Though his mother was a thin little creature with wispy white hair, Doran still didn’t have the nerve to defy her, for the woman’s small frame contained a deceptively sharp temper. He turned reluctantly towards the front of the crowd and fiddled with the frayed edges of his scarf. But try as he might, he could only steal glimpses through the forest of clamouring bodies.

An outsider to The Union, if indeed there were anywhere outside The Union, might have been surprised that the overwhelming majority of the crowd were female, though gender was a hard quality to determine under the thick layers of androgynous winter clothing that the citizens of Fort Palmer garbed themselves in. Despite the brittle cold of the early morning, the press of factory workers was making Doran sweat. He used the cuff of his tattered green jumper to wipe a dirty bead away from his eyes, then strained to get a better look.

The grounds were abuzz with peddlers and merchants bartering various goods to the gathered mob. There were the usual butchers haggling over fly-ridden sacks of dubious offal and bloodied racks of warty mokus ribs. Among them strode the odd purveyors of clinking krat-bone charms, rotting totems designed to ward off evil thoughts. The people who caught Doran’s eyes though were the misanthropes that only emerged from the dark recesses of Palmer for events such as these, the unshaven doomsingers who wailed the songs of the end times and the monks and chanters shouting out cries for repentance and blood at the top of their faithful lungs. Most unsettling of all were the blind zealots, those unwashed degenerates assailed by dark visions. These madmen muttered and laughed to themselves as the rabble shoved their way past, numbed to the chattering portents. For what good were babblings of the future to a world that had already ended? The apocalypse had been and gone, leaving Palmer behind on the husk that remained.

Eventually the demented crowd parted enough for Doran to get a clearer view of the main attraction. His eyes fell first upon the cowled forms of the three prisoners, shaking as they were driven into the plaza. His gaze was then drawn upwards to an imposing figure dressed in frayed robes of brown and gold, with one hairy hand resting on the hilt of an ornate walking cane. The man had a rough greying beard, and his sturdy hands and wrinkled neck were adorned in ancient jewellery that bore the insignia of Palmer’s monastery. This was High Cleric Samil Grant. Doran had seen the leader of Palmer’s clergy many times before, for the man often walked the streets of the fort, along with his ever-present entourage of shrouded monks. Ma had always warned him to stay clear of the clergy, and he didn’t need telling twice, for there was something in the holy man’s bloodshot eyes that threw a divine fear straight into the boy’s gut.

As well as the usual retinue of hooded clergymen, the cleric was flanked by a unit of soldiers. The grizzled warriors were clad in ramshackle green armour and wielded bolt-action rifles, with savage bayonets strapped to the barrels. Doran was puzzled by the presence of so many troops, as he only ever saw such large squads when they were heading out to patrol the Drakewall, or dragging the sick and old off to the sanatorium. In the background of the peculiar party stood a weary-looking woman who looked as though she’d rather not be there. Doran recognised her as High Researcher Clark, and the man at her side as the aged Lord Marshal Morray. Clergy, researchers and army, representatives from Palmer’s entire triumvirate council had gathered in the plaza. Doran turned to his mother, but her cold expression told him that this wasn’t the time for questions.

He swallowed and cast his gaze downwards when he saw the high cleric’s pet rauler slinking alongside the procession, the gaunt beast lurking menacingly upon its sleek legs. Its kind were distant cousins to the mokus, and resembled taut leopard seals crossed with shaggy wolves. Rows of slick yellow teeth glinted in the morning light, and a pair of intense black eyes stared unblinking into the crowd through an unkempt mane of oily brown hair. It sat on its haunches at its master’s feet as Grant began to address the masses in his usual, bellowing voice.

Welcome, sons and daughters of Palmer! The white sun rises and with it comes another day of struggle, another day of sacrifice. I thank you all for your efforts, and assure you that with your continued dedication and faith, we will hold off the Dust ‘til that time when we are freed from the bondage of this world!

The congregation cheered and the high cleric smiled, but he soon raised his hands to silence them. "But it is not the Dust itself that poses the greatest threat to our cause. No, my friends, for united we can outlast the devils beyond our walls ‘til the Ultimate Judgement arrives. For our foes tremble as they feel the fiery bite of the Drakewall, and they break against the power of our stalwart army! He gestured to the soldiers, who nodded solemnly in return. No, it is the danger from within that will be our downfall, for when the divine forces look down to see us shirking our ordained duties, they add another century to our penance, dooming more generations to the affliction of Limbo."

With a gesture from the high cleric, the soldiers removed the cowls from the three traitors. Doran gasped, for even though they were beaten and bruised he still recognised the terrified faces of the Abrett family, Mr Abrett, a low-ranking militiaman, his wife the factory supervisor, and their young daughter.

Behold, declared Grant, the faces of treachery! The heretic can wear any guise. They may look like your friends, your colleagues, your partners, and yes, even your children.

A ripple of murmured suspicion and accusation whispered through the uneasy crowd. Doran caught his mother’s eye and smiled nervously, but she did not return the expression, merely shaking her head and mouthing the word "listen" at him, for Grant’s volley had not abated.

Each day, we lose hundreds of lives to the eternal crusade, but still we endure. We do what we must to keep the Dust from breaking through our walls and consuming us all. By day we must be vigilant and each night we must be alert to keep death’s grip from our throats! He pointed a shaking finger at the miserable trio, "These krat-hearted malcontents would spit in the face of all we have lost, by hiding one of the enemy in our midst! This most grievous of transgressions could have cost not only their lives, but those of you and your kin as well! He held up his index finger to the people, It takes just one lapse in wit, but one moment of weakness, and we have a plague arising from within! If but a single dead man arises within our walls he will take the souls of a dozen others, and before you can cry your penance there’ll be nothing left of us but sin and rubble! He turned his hateful and sweating face from the crowd and glared at the prisoners. Our downfall, our demise. Is that what you intended!?"

No, please! whimpered Mr Abrett, "You don’t understand, he wasn’t a duster yet, he was still my father! I’m begging you, please don’t punish my wife or daughter for my mistake. I just wanted to say goodbye to him. We were going to turn him in, I swear it. We just wanted to say goodbye!"

Enough! snarled Grant. Would you pollute these people’s ears as you have your daughter’s? He clicked his fingers, Bring it forwards!

With a screech of sparks on stone, a troupe of soldiers emerged into the courtyard, dragging a great bronze contraption behind them with lengths of charred rope.

Doran’s nerves trembled as he took in the sight of the branding frame. The stark edges of the monstrous device shone fiercely in the raw light of the morning sun, resembling the eye of a huge needle dissected by a crucifix. The umber metal was wreathed in cables, and dressed in manacles and clamps. Suspended in the brass constraints were a pair of segmented bracers as long as a human arm, that sprouted numerous pipes and valves. These pipes ran to the top of the device then back down its spine before leading to a canister containing a bubbling liquid which seemed too hot for the mundane glass that held it in place. The canister was connected to a simple crank and lever, though to Doran’s young eyes it looked as menacing as a guillotine. Far above him, the petrels cawed in ravenous approval.

The high cleric nodded towards Mr Abrett. Him first.

The crowd began to chant a deep rhythmic hymn as two soldiers stepped forwards and dragged the whimpering man to his feet. He scrambled to reach his wife’s outstretched hand but a cluster of monks pushed her back to the ground. The soldiers forced Mr Abrett into the machine’s embrace, strapping his ankles together, bolting his sweating neck to the top of the frame and locking his shaking arms into the bracers. Despite the armoured appearance of the clamps, Doran suspected that their purpose was very far from protection. The man trembled in his bondage while the chanting intensified to a ferverous dirge.

The high cleric stepped in front of the condemned creature, Encel Abrett, for your crimes against The Union, before the divines and the people of Palmer I sentence you to walk the Firemarch.

A soldier approached the super-heated canister and flicked a switch upon its steaming lid. The funnel linking it to the branding frame buckled and warped as the scalding liquid surged through, and Mr Abrett reeled and shook as the heat burned the hairs from his back, but the worst was yet to come. A monk, whose entire body was concealed under the folds of a crimson robe, stepped forward and laid a solemn hand upon the lever.

Branding_Frame%20(1).tiff

Crunch.

The metal glowed an unholy shade of red, and flesh-tainted smoke billowed from the frame as the bracers clamped tight around Mr Abrett’s arms. The sound of the inhuman wail forced Doran’s eyes tightly shut.

Open them! His mother’s voice was sharper than the heretic’s scream. "Doran! I told you to watch!"

He opened a frightened eye as far as he dared, and saw that Mr Abrett was convulsing and groaning as though possessed, choking from the smoke that billowed from the glowing shackles. The man’s expression was barely recognisable, for the frame had twisted it into something beyond the kind of pain the human face was meant to endure. Only when the smoke had finally subsided did the soldiers step forwards to loosen the singed clamps.

Without the frame to hold him up, Mr Abrett slumped to the ground in a pile of smoking flesh. The branded man wasn’t moving, and even as the skin on his arms warped and boiled around the blackened letters of the word "HERETIC," not a sound of pain came from the limp body. The soldiers readied their rifles and advanced towards the ruined pile of rags. One of them leant down and pressed two gloved fingers against the man’s neck, but after a moment he hastily withdrew them. He didn’t need to say anything, for it was apparent to all that Mr Abrett’s traitorous heart had been unable to withstand the agony of the process. And all knew what happened next. Without waiting for a command, the other soldier pointed the barbed stub of his rifle at the back of the corpse’s head.

Mr Abrett’s body shuddered as a tumultuous ripple of dark energy began to hungrily reform the dead flesh, snapping ligaments and dissolving the skin with a grotesque hissing sound. The foul metamorphosis was cut off by the soldier pulling the trigger, twice.

Doran peered out through his fingers as the sound of the shots echoed through the stunned plaza. The silence was broken once more as Mrs Abrett and her daughter wailed and shrunk away from the limp remains, as a stream of charcoal-addled blood dribbled out onto the street, pooling around the mud-slathered boots of the congregation. It was as though the liquid vestiges of Encel Abrett were trying to escape the shame of their decimated host.

The high cleric took a step forward, closed his eyes and raised his hands in the air above the sobered body. Dust depart.

Dust depart, murmured the audience in unison.

Grant opened his eyes and lowered his hands, then gestured towards the two remaining Abretts. The wife next.

Unwilling to watch a second time, Doran turned his head away from his mother so that she couldn’t see his terrified face. He wished that he could freeze time by scrunching up his eyes, or that he could just force the horror away by the power of thought alone. Despite knowing it was useless, he squeezed his lids closed as tightly as they would go, and tried to muffle the sound of Mrs Abrett sobbing as they strapped her into the machine, hanging her above her husband’s body like a weeping scarecrow over a burnt harvest. He sunk his fingers deep into his ears to avoid the screams as her skin was melted away, and breathed through a crack in the corner of his mouth so as not to smell or taste the stink of incinerated meat being chewed up by white-hot steel.

Silence. It seemed as though the worst was over so Doran inched his eyes open. Mrs Abrett lay slumped over the body of her husband, twitching and moaning like a dying animal. The widow’s burning arms bore the same mark of shame as her partner’s, except she was alive to experience the excruciating torment it inflicted on her body. She raised her blackened hands in mute protest as the monks advanced on her still-unbranded daughter, whose face looked as though all the blood had been drained from it.

In his mind, Doran pleaded with the girl, begged her to fight or run. For a moment he dared to believe that he could storm up there and save her, pull the vile pipes out of the branding frame and somehow beat some life back into Mr Abrett’s destroyed heart. But then reality caught up to emotion, and he remembered the soldiers with their rifles and knives, and the crowd who sung in adoration when boiling steel was pressed onto flesh. And so he stayed silent.

No, not her, said the high cleric as he beckoned the trembling child to come towards him. She stifled a sob as she took an uneasy step forwards. As she did so, her gaze drifted down to the heap of blood and cloth that had once been her father, and the whimpering wreck that wore the face of her mother. Father Grant smiled at the timid girl, Don’t weep, my child. Tell me your name.

Elissa… Abrett. She said her family name reluctantly, aware of the peril it had placed her in.

Father Grant reached out to her, and she flinched as his hairy thumb smeared a line of tears away from her cheek. "This is not a day for sadness, Elissa. This is a day for meditation and repentance. A time for us all to look deep within ourselves and consider our place in Limbo."

"Our… place?" she whispered.

Grant rested his hands upon her thin shoulders, "You are but a child, no doubt led astray by these cowardly souls. I look for the spark of hope in all my children, and I believe that some who stray from the righteous path should be offered a chance at redemption. Denounce these heretics, and you will be spared the brand."

Elissa took a fleeting glance towards her parents, turning away when her fearful eyes met theirs. Her father was dead and hollow, and her mother was not far behind. She looked down at her feet, I…

Loudly please. Let all of Palmer hear you!

From Elissa’s small frame shattered a voice, as loud a voice as she could muster, I denounce them! I denounce them! falling to her knees, she buried her face in her hands as the crowd applauded her proclamation.

Well said. Father Grant turned to a pair of monks who had appeared by his side, Take her to the monastery and let her prove herself to The Union once again.

A mass of eager robes engulfed the girl and stole her away towards the hub, where the monastery’s indigo colours fluttered gleefully in the frenzied winds.

Grant returned his attention to his flock, "A final reminder to all! If any of your loved ones show signs of The Dusting, you are to report them to the sanatorium without delay. Failure to do so… the cleric turned his nose up at the wretches lying dejected on the floor beside him. Failure to do so is not advisable."

The priest turned and strode after his legion of monks, his old robes billowing in the rising wind and his cane rapping smartly on the cobbled street. Two clergymen advanced and draped a black shroud over Mr Abrett’s body, just as a pair of guards dragged his widow to her feet and jabbed at her to move. The crowd parted to form a corridor leading out of the plaza; their glowering eyes framed the heretic’s path, cursing and spitting as the branded traitor walked the blood-stained road. Doran started as he felt his mother’s hand upon his shoulder.

It’s over, she said, quietly. Let’s get you to school.

As they walked in silence through the baying crowd, Doran found that his eyes still prickled with the infernal silhouette of the brutalised couple screaming as the fires flooded through them. He winced as the audience’s chanting echoed through his head, for his young mind couldn’t comprehend why such a vile display had been allowed to happen, much less how anyone could enjoy watching such a thing.

Why did they do that, Ma? Why did the monks burn the Abretts like that?

Because they had to, Doran.

"Why did they have to?"

You heard the same speech as I. What don’t you understand?

Doran thought for a moment, for there was much about what he’d seen that he didn’t understand, but he couldn’t seem to put adequate words to his confusion. I know they were heretics, but what exactly did they do wrong?

They were harbouring a threat to Palmer. Mr Abrett’s father was ill and they didn’t turn him in to the sanatorium.

But they were just trying to look after him. They didn’t want to lose him, so… Doran caught his mother’s narrowed eye and stumbled over his words, I’m sorry, I just don’t understand it. Why were they punished, Ma? Why did Mr Abrett have to die?

She sighed, "You’ve a kind heart, but you must steel it if you want to survive in this world. If Elissa’s grandfather had perished outside the sanatorium, his duster would have killed her, and Mr Abrett and Mrs Abrett as well. The dead aren’t people any more, Doran. When they die, the Dust… it takes them, and they become a footsoldier of the enemy. Believe it or not, the Abretts got off lucky today. Father Grant could have had them flayed alive for what they did."

But they protected the old man out of love. Did they really deserve all that?

Save your love for the living. Love keeps us together but it’s the thing that can hurt us the most. You can’t let such childish things get in the way when the time comes.

When the time comes for what?

Just promise me you’ll remember what you saw today, alright?

Sure, Ma. I promise.

Good boy, she coughed heavily then smiled at him. Taking his cold little hand in hers, they walked on towards the school.

Doran still didn’t understand why Ma had showed him all this. Obviously there was a lesson to learn, but he couldn’t yet figure out what it was. He already knew what trouble you could get into by breaking the rules, and he already knew the danger that the Dust people represented to Palmer and The Union, and by extension, to him. He reasoned that it was probably just another one of those things he’d understand when he was older.

Far above the worries of mother and son, the ash petrels had far simpler concerns in their animal minds. Mrs Abrett was being marched across Palmer’s streets towards the main gate, and her passage was haunted by a flock of skyward shadows, the corpse-feeders hovering in a wide circle to form a feathered storm cloud over the stumbling woman. The brontide of voracious squawks was fuelled by the intoxicating waft of burned flesh that arose from the sorry procession.

Palmer’s main gate fell open with the heavy clatter of chains, the impact sending a tremble through the city. Before the sands could settle, Mrs Abrett had been driven across the transient link between her world and the hell beyond. Twice she tried to run back, and twice she was repelled by the soldiers’ bayonets. On she quivered across the fringes of the windswept desert, step after torturous step, until she reached the Drakewall. Her escort dragged her through the encamped defences, her passage earning her the glares and curses of the stationed troops. At last they reached the final wall, and with neither ceremony nor mercy the guards threw the traitor forward across the fiery border. A border which supposedly divided the men from the monsters.

Still weeping and clutching at her ravaged arms, Mrs Abrett staggered past the roar of artillery, goaded forwards by the fear of the eager guns aimed at her back. Her only chance to survive the next five minutes was to get beyond the Drakewall’s range and pray for a miracle, though she knew in her heart that her heresy had put her beyond the care of the divines. All the same, she began to chant the same hymn that the crowd had swelled with when they’d watched her husband burn.

The petrels hovered readily in the skies above, realising that although their terrified meal would not be rich, they wouldn’t have to wait long for it. They watched intently as the feeble blot of life ran tripping and scrambling across the cratered wasteland, ducking through chasms and ditches and running like a maddened beast to avoid the ceaseless volleys of cannon fire that warped the landscape around her.

Mrs Abrett’s last few terrified seconds were a nightmare of smoke and pain. Her first mistake was looking back, her second was freezing up when she found the shell hurtling towards her. With a screech and a crimson burst, her trial was over. Perhaps it was for the best though, for none survived the Firemarch. All you could do was decide how you wanted to go; the last decision of a heretic is always whether to accept a quick death by human artillery, or a slow demise at the hands of the dusters. Nearly all chose the former.

A shroud of shrieking petrels descended on the scattered fragments of the body, the birds revelling and glutting themselves upon the crisp shreds of obliterated flesh. Scrapping and hollering, they devoured every twitching trace of Abrett from the palette of sand and bone. Suddenly, one of the birds screeched out in alarm, and the others looked up as one. Time’s up. As quickly as they’d descended, they tore up into the sky once more, as several more dangerous scavengers were now approaching.

The wet bones of Mrs Abrett cracked under the gnarled soles of trampling feet. The pale host of skeletal silhouettes stood above the mess of flesh and bird waste, waiting, for if enough of the head and heart remained, they would soon have another soldier in their assault.

With a gaseous burst of shadowy power, Mrs Abrett’s wasted limbs snapped back into place and the human wreckage knotted its mutilated fibres with the blackened earth of the desert, the body sewing itself together in an unnatural fusion of flesh and stone. The shredded remains of a Palmeri factory uniform hung loosely from the mannequin of raw bone and muscle. The eyes that had just moments ago been so full of terror and pain were now tinted black, as though the ink of sin had been poured into the empty bulbs. The duster, reborn and baptised in blood, turned back towards the path it had been forced along in life and took its first, lurching steps forwards.

The others closed ranks around their new comrade, and all together they broke into a loping charge towards the sound of gunfire. Though many of them would be destroyed by the Drakewall, there would always be more of them to follow and pick over the fallen corpses for parts.

They would never break off their attack. Never.

A duster could wait in ambush for a thousand years below the sands, and fight until the sun itself turned cold. If not today, then tomorrow, or the day after that. Even if it had to wage war until the death of time itself and watch the world end all over again, The Dust would get its due.

Chapter Two

The Dustlight Girl

I remember the day I met Alena with a vivid terror. To think that such a deadly and relentless sickness could hide so well behind the smile of a schoolgirl. If I’d known then what our friendship would do to the world…

It was still early so Palmer’s narrow streets were sparsely lit, but already the frozen ground shook with the tireless hammering from the forges and factories that dominated the ramshackle city. The endless song of industry could only be drowned out briefly by the intermittent rattles of machine-gun fire and the blasting recoil of the fort’s cannons. Doran tugged at his mother’s tough and calloused hand.

I’m worried, Ma. What if I don’t fit in?

She turned to him and smiled knowingly. "I thought you wanted to go to school? Back in the plaza, you couldn’t wait to get going!"

Doran thought for a moment. She has me there, because I can’t admit that I was scared, that I’d have run the full length of Palmer to get away from what I’d seen. I wasn’t nervous then, he ventured, because school seemed further away than it does now.

She held him back as a shadow darkened their path and a great mechanical foot crashed down in front of them. It was followed by an iron knuckle swaying like a pendulum on a rusted chain. The battered chassis of a knuckledragger loomed over them, its porthole eye surveying the streets. After a moment, a robotic voice barked through the speakers mounted on its hull.

All citizens, attend to your work. Hard graft is the foundation of our ascension!

Upright_Knuckledragger.tiff

It lumbered onwards, the crash of its piston-powered footsteps sending tremors through the ground and up through Doran’s spine. Though a twenty-foot high war machine should inspire fear in the heart of any young boy, he couldn’t help but feel fascinated by the knuckledraggers. It must be amazing, he thought, to be in the pilot seat of an indestructible machine. He imagined climbing into one and throwing boulders over Palmer’s ramparts, turning the hapless dusters beyond into pulp, or standing tall and invulnerable over the high cleric’s rauler and sending it whimpering for cover.

Come on, said his mother, shattering the daydream. They carried on with their journey through the sullen streets, picking their way across the icy puddles. I know you’re nervous, but you’ll be fine. In fact, I’m sure you’ll love it. Remember what we talked about? You’ll learn all about history, how to read maps and how to defend yourself from dusters. Everything you need to be a big, strong soldier like your dad. Her voice was soothing, even though her words weren’t.

Though he could never bring himself to tell her, Doran barely remembered his father at all. Yes, there was the faded photograph on a table back home, the image of his parents together, but the man in the picture drew a blank in the boy’s mind; the face that smiled from beyond the cracked glass was that of a stranger. He knew the truth deep down, even if his mother wouldn’t say it, for all the stories the children of Palmer heard about the glorious exploits of The Union army were a thin cover for the reality that fathers were a rare commodity inside the walls.

Okay, Ma. I’ll go.

Good boy. She patted his scruffy hair, Now come along, or you’ll be late.

They passed through the munitions district where Marta worked. A burning stench of chemicals hung in the air here, though Doran found the virulent cocktail of gases strangely comforting, after all, his mother often came home stinking of the stuff. The winding and erratically-built streets were framed by mounds of scrap and detritus, creeping up the walls and covering the worn pavement. Through the trash crawled foul-smelling rotclams, shelled molluscs the colour of bleached iron, their tubular mouths sucking the chemical residue from the surface of the riven walls.

Children weren’t allowed to walk the streets unsupervised, for the bushes of razorwire and mountains of shrapnel-like cut-offs made it too dangerous, and not just for a clumsy child. It was a tenet of The Union that the great enemy remained outside the walls, or confined to the sanatorium, and since all who died succumbed to The Dusting, it was vital to minimise accidental fatalities. Doran’s mother was humming to herself, and he knew the tune well, a fable that every babe within The Union hears. The Tale of the Dust Child:

"Upon the cold and windy days,

Children run and go astray.

They’ll sneak and hide away from home,

And climb dark mounds of scrap and bone.

‘Til foul winds pluck them from their peaks,

And down they fall with helpless shrieks.

Dust descends, they stand again,

With bloody lust for human brain.

Follow footsteps, wander back,

Home to mother’s little shack.

Upon the door they beat and wail,

And then the iron walls they scale.

Cut through the roof and