Beyond the Storm by Adam Jones

Author:Adam Jones [Jones, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tea Cosy Publishing
Published: 2015-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ketch stepped into the main hall at The City of Light and the room went silent. His rifle was still drawn, held firmly between his fists. His hair was bedraggled and swept across his face, thick matted chunks of it, sticking down to his forehead. He had blood on his hands, crusted and brown, finishing at his wrists and accompanied by a series of brown splatters which crept up the front of his t-shirt. He looked like he had been to hell and back.

Around him the faces of the city stood and stared. The older ones among them knew the man as Ketch, the executioner who had beaten his son and abandoned the city. Others simply saw a battered old man, covered in blood, with hatred in his eyes. Without exception, they were terrified of him. He looked from left to right, surveying the faces in front of him. Some cracked from exposure to the sun, others pale and withdrawn, the darklings who had been brought up in the shadows of the storm. Some he recognised from his former life, and some he didn’t. Regardless, on this day, he knew that none of them mattered to him.

‘What’re you looking at,’ he cried to the mass of people. He lifted his rifle forwards, shaking it at the end of his arm. Some of the people shuffled backwards and away, while others remained rooted to the spot. Too scared to move, or even to breath. ‘See anything interesting?’ he shouted again. This led to a further group of onlookers disappearing silently back to their day to day business. ‘Get away, the lot of you.’

With this final statement, Ketch lowered his gun and cursed under his breath before walking into the centre of the hall. Anyone who was foolish enough not to have moved by the time he reached them was unceremoniously shunted sideways by the butt of his gun. His face had collapsed into a scowl now, surrounded by the people who had refused to help him; the people who refused to follow him into the wastes to find his son. In his mind, they were just as responsible for his son’s death as he was

He stalked through the hall, looking back at the faces which peered at him from behind market stalls, and those leering down from the bedding above. He needed the girl. She was the one who had the answer. The one who could find his nemesis, the killer of his son. He wandered past Catcher, who remembered him only too well. Catcher had nearly ended up at the end of Ketch’s rope at one point. He had no desire to come into close quarters with the man again.

Ketch continued, looking left and right, scanning faces for the girl. He passed the carrier bag seller and his pace slowed. The hall opened up at this point, giving way to the side aisles of the cathedral, spreading the populous out more thinly. There were groups of people, huddled in conversation, drinking steaming fluid from battered tin mugs.

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