Chapter 1 now

Suncaller
B. John Shaw
Liddle
Copyright © 2010 B. John Shaw Liddle
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, information storage, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
prior permission in writing from the
copyright owner.
www.bjohnshawliddle.co.uk
978-0-9566090-9-0
Cover design by
Leanne Vaughan-Philipps
First published 2011 by Deadstar Publishing,
Cardiff, Wales
www.deadstarpublishing.co.uk
Part I: Copley and Masks
Chapter 1
In the big stone house there is a mirror. The frame is worked from
gold and dusted with diamond so that the light reflects from it in a
glorious aureate blaze. The gold is beaten into the form of branches,
each one resplendent with perfect leaves that seem to shift in the
faint cooling breeze. They are from the five magical trees, and
Mortimer Hope repeats their names under his breath as he climbs
the long staircase that leads up to the glass.
“Oak. Ash.”
His feet feel like they’ve been cast in lead and every gasp burns
in his lungs. He can smell his own heat and exhaustion rolling off him
in waves but he knows that every step takes him closer to his goal.
Behind him the sunlight gleams in through stained glass windows
and puddles around his feet like liquid amber, shot through with
emerald, sapphire and ruby. He ignores the beauty. It would be easy
to get lost in it, and he has work to do. He will find his reflection.
“Rowan. Holly.”
The mirror before him, Mortimer falters. He forgets the last tree,
he forgets the pain in his chest and legs, and he forgets that he’s
been here before – a thousand times before. The young man in the
mirror stares back in unabashed horror and confusion as Mortimer
Hope reaches up to run his fingers over the porcelain mask that
hides his face.
Then he screams.
Sarah jerked awake in her pokey room, sweat beading her top lip and
darkening the V of her favourite night time t-shirt. The noise that had
awakened her started again. Scaredy-cat ‘Hopeless’ from next door,
whinging in his sleep. She reached down by the side of her bed to
retrieve one of her Dr Martens boots and thumped it three times on
the wall behind her head.
“Fucking girly boy” she hissed between clenched teeth. “Every
other fucking night!” She punctuated her words with further furious
thumps of the heavy shoe.
‘Hopeless’ Mortimer Hope was sixteen and in the same year as her
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at school. Sarah had stopped getting her night terrors by the time she
was twelve. And she could throw better than Hopeless, even with her
boobs getting in the way. That said, anyone could throw better than
Hopeless, or do pretty much anything better than him. He was friendly
enough, in a kind of shy way, and people at school put up with him, but
he couldn’t do anything.
He and his aunty had turned up in town two years ago with three
suitcases between them and the soles of his shoes flapping when he
walked. They’d moved in next door and since then Sarah had barely
spoken to her neighbour, or even paid him too much attention. It was
a small town, and Sarah didn’t want to be seen speaking to the boy
that fashion forgot but every few nights she’d hear him moaning and
screaming in the room behind her, and then she’d have to beat on the
wall with her boots until he woke up and stopped blubbering.
“Shit.” Her phone said it was three in the morning. She’d need
eye shadow tomorrow then. Sarah sat up in bed and swung her legs
over onto the floor, hands groping for the bedside lamp. It illuminated
paper faces; the cream of the music world, creased and battered but
still possessed of their glory. One corner of her little den was given
over to her dead rockers collection – getting fuller at an alarming rate
recently – and it was towards that she moved, not lifting her feet to
keep the noise down. In a plastic skull next to a Dimebag signature pick
and a rare Ronnie James Dio album was her emergency stash – cheap
foreign cigarettes, a lighter, incense cones and two strips of sleeping
pills. Her parents didn’t like it, but her parents didn’t like the pictures of
Marilyn Manson or the nose stud either, so that was okay. She opened
a window as a concession and glared out into the dark, smoking until
the drugs took her off into cool, uninterrupted sleep.
Mr Brisken, the sports teacher, was not a fan of Mortimer.
“Useless bloody boy,” he’d mutter loudly whenever Hopeless
took his turn at the latest activity to come his way. Today was rugby
and, as usual in team games, the sporty kids were using Mortimer as
a combination buffer zone and joke. “Pick the ball up for God’s sake,
you numpty! Now run.” Brisken gaped in confusion as Mortimer began
charging with the ball, all feet and elbows, up the field towards his own
try line. “Incredible. Bloody incredible.”
It wasn’t that Mortimer Hope was lazy, or bad natured or rude.
He was simply incompetent and vaguely pitiable. It was pretty obvious
why the other kids called him Hopeless, and he took it well, with a
slight smile on his pale face and that sideways duck that was half shrug,
half dodge. Like he expected a slap.
Now the object of Brisken’s concern was attempting to hand the
ball over to another player, holding it out in front of him like some
kind of dangerous animal and chasing the other boy. Brisken started
to count under his breath. By the time he’d reached four, two other
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boys had slammed into Hopeless from the sides and sandwiched him
between them. Brisken caught Mortimer’s eye and nodded him toward
the sidelines. The boy half-shrugged again and grinned apologetically
before shuffling off to the edge of the pitch to the accompaniment
of his teammates’ mocking cheers. Hopeless rolled his eyes and took
a small bow as he left the field of play. None of the mockery upset
him too much. After all, as the other kids had noticed, he was pretty
hopeless. And they were much nicer about letting him know it than
inner-city kids. A few years ago he would have had the crap kicked
out of him for being shit at rugby. Here, he was just a bit of a clown, a
harmless joke.
Hopeless’ only real problem with this town was the layout. The
school lay at the bottom of a massive hill, with his street halfway up. The
entire town was built around the hill, with the main street stretching
out in the little valley between Copley Hill (the big one) and Snowhead
(the neighbouring town). It gave the entire place a claustrophobic
quality that sent a prickling feeling into Mort’s shoulders and neck and,
from the top of the hill it looked like the town was falling into a crack in
the earth. He didn’t go up there often, partly because that was where
the expensive houses were and Mortimer’s aunt had made it very clear
that people like that didn’t mix with the folk who lived down the hill.
But the real reason was the way the land stretched out from up there,
like something out of a dream.
Mr Brisken left Hopeless alone for the rest of the lesson, apart from
a five minute ‘chat’ towards the end. It was the same monologue he’d
been getting from teachers since he was ten years old, and the message
was the same: “You’re not stupid. You’re not misbehaving. You’re not
even lazy. How do you manage to be so bad at everything?” Usually it
ended with what Hopeless thought of as the Future Questions – where
do you see yourself in five years’ time and all that guff. He’d come up
with a few answers in his time and, with careful consideration, worked
out that what teachers wanted to hear was something that anyone
could do. That way they could give you a pamphlet and a website
address and walk off feeling like they’d achieved something. This time
he plumped for the civil service and smiled to himself as an expression
of relief suffused Mr Brisken’s features. He’d stick to that answer for a
few weeks and then come up with something new, or revert to manual
labourer. It was always worth it to see the cold pale fear on his teachers’
faces when they had to deal with the image of ‘Hopeless’ Mortimer
Hope staring inquisitively at a high velocity nail gun, half shrugging and
saying “Well, I have had the safety training, so I should be alright.”
“Oh, Hopeless!” The shout came from halfway across the yard, but
Mortimer didn’t have to turn around to know who it would be. Instead
he raised a hand in greeting and squared his shoulders slightly against
the inevitable impact. Sure enough, there was a following cry of “Think
fast, short arse!” and the bag of rugby balls collided with his backside.
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He let himself fall backwards onto them, but before he hit the ground
his momentum was stopped by a shovel-like hand in the small of his
back.
“Fuckin’ hell, Hopeless. If I shout ‘Think fast’ you gotta think fast!”
A long thin figure loomed over him, topped by a mop of curly hair and
a face that was mostly grin and ears. “Get up you bloody mook, or
they’ll say I’m picking on you again.”
Mortimer struggled to his feet and hoisted the string bag onto his
shoulders, whereupon the tall boy took it back and humped it the extra
foot onto his own. Mortimer sighed.
“You know, Colly, I can carry shit. I’m not completely incapable.”
Colly grinned again and flicked Mortimer’s forehead with his
free hand. “Yes you are, Hopeless. That’s why we call you Hopeless,
remember?”
“Fuck off, Colly.”
The two boys made their way back to the changing rooms, bantering
lightly, until Colly nudged Mortimer in the ribs and motioned with his
head towards the outer school fence. “Your spooky boyfriend’s here
again, gayboy.”
The insult was spoken without malice, and tinged with a little fear.
The man standing at the fence had that effect. He was pale, with whiteblonde hair and a pale cream suit. Today he carried a black umbrella
folded into his armpit, even though the sun shone brightly, and just as
always he stared at Mortimer Hope with an expression of utter disgust.
Teachers had noticed, of course, but the one time someone went to
move the man along, Mortimer had seen something truly terrifying.
It had been Mr Salisbury, the new history teacher. He was a big
man with an enormous voice, and Hopeless had gone to him in hopes
of getting rid of the spooky albino (as Colly insisted on calling him). Mr
Salisbury had gone out to speak to the man, and while everyone else
swore blind that they’d seen him trip in the road and be sideswiped by
a transit van, Mortimer had seen something else. The man in cream
had shaken Mr Salisbury’s hand, then twisted viciously and kicked
him three times in the ribs. Then, when Salisbury was on the floor,
gasping for breath, the spooky albino had flipped him over with his
white winklepicker shoe and stamped on his collar bone – once on
each side.
Mr Salisbury went to the hospital and everyone was told he’d been
in a road accident. Mortimer hadn’t said anything, except to Colly,
who’d responded by punching him in the top of his head and telling
him to “stop being such a mental, Hopeless.” No one had said another
word about the man in the cream suit. Since then, Mortimer hurried
inside the school buildings whenever the spooky albino appeared, and
so the two boys jogged the rest of the way to the sports block.
“I’m off, Hopeless,” Colly yelled from outside the shower, his voice
reverberating around the small tiled room. “Fuckin’ choir practice
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calls, yo!” His warbling operatics faded into the distance as Mortimer
washed and dried, pulling on his slightly damp clothes in the shower
room. He’d learned long ago about leaving his clothes in the communal
changing room. He combed his hair and attempted a new cool hairstyle.
Pointless. Cool didn’t work on Hopeless Mortimer. He shrugged and
glanced around to see if anyone had noticed the moment of madness
that led to super hold gel and messy hair. His breath froze in his chest.
The man in cream was crouched on the windowsill outside the shower
room, looking in. He waited until he was sure he had Mortimer’s full
attention and then shook his head slowly in utter contempt. Hopeless
ran out of the showers and towards the safety of the canteen, fear
speeding him on his way.
Sarah and her friends sat clustered around a pair of portable mini
speakers in the car park, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
Monique, the French girl whose parents had moved to town a few
months ago, was playing them some new European sludge prog band
she’d caught on a recent holiday.
“I dunno, Mon. I don’t understand the lyrics, and it sounds all weird
and classical.”
Sarah glanced up at the girl responsible for such a hopelessly uncool
statement. “It’s meant to sound weird and classical, Lauren.” Sarah put
all her withering scorn into her voice. “And the lyrics are in Romanian.
It’s beautiful. You just need to expand your horizons.”
Lauren sighed and nodded. “I guess it is pretty cool after all. I just
need a bit of time to get used to it.”
Sarah smiled at her and passed her a cigarette. The girls smoked
in silence as the ten minute long song came to its climactic solo and
screaming finish. Then the conversation began again as they watched
the elongated figure of Dan Colflor gangling across the yard to the
music rooms.
“He smokes pot, you know.”
“Colly? Nah, he’s too much of a mummy’s boy.”
“He’s not. He fingered a girl in assembly last year.”
“How do you know? Was it you?”
“Nah, I wouldn’t let him touch me with a barge-pole. It was Alice
Kingston. I was sat in the same row as them, and his hand was right up
her skirt.”
“Liar.”
“Am not. Ask him.”
Sarah stood up and filled her lungs, then yelled across the car park,
“Oi, Colly! Come ‘ere peanut dick!”
Colly grinned and bounded over to the group of goths.
“What can I do for you, mistress of the night, oh dark and beautiful
keeper of the Satanic mysteries, virgin queen of –”
Sarah raised an elegantly sculpted eyebrow and Colly broke off in
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mid phrase, his smile widening. “Virgin queen too much? I’ll work on a
better title. What do you want, goth-bitch?”
“Did you finger Alice Kingston in assembly last year?”
Colly looked blank for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, once or
twice. Why?”
Sarah paused, considering her next question. “Can you get any
pot?”
“Sure. S’not the best stuff, unless I go into Bris’le or Wells. Deal is,
I get it, you show me somewhere safe to smoke it. My mum’ll murder
me if she smells it in my room again.”
“Pussy. Fine. Can you get a quarter?”
“Yeah. Chuck us your number. I’ve got to get to choir practice, or I’ll
get a bollocking from Miss Marsh.” Colly threw his phone underhand
and hopped impatiently from one long leg to the other while Sarah
entered her number with exaggerated care. “I’ll save you as bitchqueen shall I?” Colly quipped, and ran off back towards the music
room. Sarah flipped him the V as he went. Lauren and Monique stood
up and looked at her with expressions of shock and awe.
“Are you going to fuck him?”
Sarah shook her head in despair. “No Lauren, I’m not going to fuck
him. I’m going to buy drugs off him. There’s a difference.”
Monique smiled broadly. “I’d fuck him. Especially if I could get free
pot out of it too. He’s cute.”
Sarah considered the suggestion for a minute, then shook her head
again. “Cute yeah, but he’s annoying. And have you seen who he hangs
out with?”
The girls nodded. No amount of cute could make up for Hopeless
Mortimer, the cry baby, the bad luck charm. He just wasn’t worth the
hassle.
The day passed in a blur for Mortimer. Maths was its usual combination
of humiliation and suffocation, partly because of Mrs Howell, who
stank of cheap alcohol and expensive perfume. Then there was the
fact that trigonometry was painfully confusing, half of the rules didn’t
even use English letters and the textbooks were all second hand.
Someone had drawn penises and glasses on all the people who were
apparently solving their life’s problems with the power of maths, and
one imaginative student had covered an entire page with sketches of
a six-legged, three horned scaly thing that was their interpretation of
the hypotenuse. Hopeless had trouble with most kinds of maths, and
whenever X and Y became involved his personal preference was to curl
into a ball until they went away. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option in
year eleven because Maths was one of the Big Subjects that you had to
pass to avoid being branded a thickie for the rest of your life. Mortimer
was pretty confident that the branding had already happened and
would remain, but his aunty had explained that if you failed a GCSE
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it was a black mark against the teacher who had taught you. He had
remarked that if they weren’t able to teach him, then surely they
deserved a black mark. That had earned him a slap on the thigh with a
wooden spoon and he had been ‘applying himself’ at Maths ever since
– with few results.
Not only that, but he’d managed to trip on his terror-driven flight
to the canteen and put his shoulder through one of the big screens of
A-level artwork from last year. Now he was in pain, scared and had to
stay in after school to try and repair the damage done to the board.
It was half six when he finally got out. The road outside the school had
emptied, except for a few teachers’ cars, and there was an oppressive
silence that swept over the streets like the mugginess that comes
before a thunderstorm. Shivering in pain, Hopeless sloped down the
street, eyes darting right and left, watching for anything out of the
ordinary. He always walked this way, and nothing interesting ever
really happened to him, so when the man in the cream suit stepped
out from behind a wall Mortimer barely even noticed. It was only as
the man began to approach that Hopeless recognised him. He froze.
The spooky albino stopped a few feet away and stared at him, silent
and motionless.
When the man spoke it was with a strange accent, like an American
movie star from the nineteen fifties – really clear diction and a weird
lightness of tone. There was a snarl in the voice too, hidden under
every word. It wrapped around Mortimer like a snake, holding him in
place.
“They’re right to call you hopeless, mask boy. Don’t know who you
are, do ya? Don’t freakin’ blame you – I wouldn’t credit it, if I didn’t
know you. ”
Mortimer felt his breath lurch in his throat. The albino had called
him mask boy. That was crazy. He put his head down and stared at the
pavement.
“Either,” he muttered, “you’re a hallucination, in which case you
can’t hurt me, or you’re some kind of psychic pervert, in which case
there’s nothing I can do to stop you doing whatever you want to. So
I’m just going to keep on walking home.” There were already tears in
his eyes. They hadn’t started to run over his cheeks yet, but he knew
they would.
“I’m going to kill you, Mortimer Hope. Carve you up into little
bits and bury you at six different crossroads. Then I’m going to plant
parsley and nettles at each one, so no one will go near them, and you’ll
be forgotten.” Now the tears came, as the man leaned closer, close
enough to touch Mortimer on the shoulder. “Why the fuck are you
crying, boy?” The question held genuine confusion, and that, along
with the contact, snapped something inside Hopeless.
“What? You just told me you’re going to kill me!” Mortimer heard
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his voice quivering and rising, felt the first spits of rain on the back of
his neck. “I’m about to get murdered by some – some – fucking spooky
albino, and you want to know why I’m fucking crying. You dick!” He
ducked his shoulder away from the man’s touch and lashed out with
his school bag.
The man didn’t flinch from the blow; he even smiled as it connected.
He shook his head again, though this time there was a strange affection
in his eyes.
“Spooky albino, eh? I like that. I’m not going to kill you here, boy.
Not today. You’re not worth my time yet, but you will be, or you ain’t
your mother’s son. No, today I just want you to know how you’re
marked. It’ll be me that kills you. That’s all. Unless you want to stop
me, that is.”
Staring into pale rose-coloured eyes, Mortimer felt relief wash over
him like a wave of hideous nausea. “Who the hell are you? What d’you
mean about my mum?” Now he was screaming through the drizzle and
the tears, fists clenched. “Why me, you fucker? What have I done to
you? I’m just a kid.”
Droplets of rain began to bounce off the road as the downpour
started in earnest. The cream suited man laughed and walked past
Mortimer. As he left he called over his shoulder, “The name’s Cambrian.
Remember it. See you round, mask boy.”
Mortius, blade-master of the northern empire stands glaring
down at the forces amassed upon the plains below, eyes hard and
unforgiving behind his emerald-hued mask. His long dark hair whips
out behind him as he rests his hands on the pommel of his swordglaive. At a word the men behind him run up flags, directing the
imperial troops to split and reform into new formations, ready to
accept the charge of the creatures facing them.
The enemy are multitudinous, stinking of death and their own
foul effluence. Mortius, and every single member of his army, knows
the cost of failure here. The city behind them, every man, woman
and child will fall if the enemy crests this rise. The only survivors will
be those out here in the fields, and they will be the truly damned, for
the enemy tortures the body and taints the minds of their captives.
Mortius says nothing as he begins the slow walk down towards
the foe, simply placing a hand on the shoulder of his eldest daughter
and locking eyes with her for the moment it takes her to understand.
She will co-ordinate here. Her mother waits in the city; ready to flood
the great reservoir if all else fails. Mortius hungers for blood.
Now he speeds up, his sandals barely grace the ground as he
powers down the hill. A cheer follows him like the wake of a racing
skimmer. His hair, his armour, his weapon, all are recognised, but
the words that follow in the trail of his dust speak of none of these
things.
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“The Mask,” they shout. “The Mask goes to battle.”
The cry is repeated as the blade-master passes his battle lines,
on into the realm of skirmishers and sappers. Now only the tips of
his toes touch the ground at each step, and he picks out the first of
his targets, stood atop a fifteen-foot wave of clawing, wailing flesh
that Mortius’ people call a besieger. They are almost undefeatable,
having no real brain or individuality, and act as a semi-sentient
siege tower and battering ram. On top of the besieger some dark
intelligence has affixed a wood and bone platform, attached with
foot long staples to the monster’s hide. It is on this platform that
the Herder waits. This creature is different to the massed hordes
that charge towards Mortius’ fair city. It is clothed in dark grey robes
and carries a pair of barbed chains in its hands. Its eyes are full of
cruelty and intelligence, rather than the insatiable hunger of its
lesser fellows.
Red lacquered armour flashing in the sunlight, Mortius leaps,
his speed converted in an instant to upwards movement. The jump
takes him to within a foot of his foe but his path is obstructed by
a pair of drone creatures. He lashes out with his glaive, pulling the
blow back the instant it strikes, using the transformed momentum
to pull himself into a spin that barrels through another two drones.
Now his glaive stabs down into the platform of muscle and flesh
that carries his opponent, and another drone is dispatched with a
crunching double-footed kick.
Mortius has his feet. He stands on the back of a behemoth of
stinking, pallid, pseudo-life facing the grey robed figure. It has no
lower jaw; ritual scars and studs mar the flesh on its forehead. There
is a tattoo of a triple sunburst over its left temple; Mortius’ eyes
close briefly below the mask.
“Greigor.” The word is statement, greeting, acknowledgment
and apology.
“Mortius of the Green Mask. Well met.” The mouth doesn’t move
– the words simply burn themselves into Mortius’ awareness, as if
they are written on the wind. The tongue twitches slightly, but that
is all. It does not sound like Greigor anymore. It sounds like death.
No quarter is offered, no terms discussed. The two figures simply
stand before each other, shifting slightly on their feet. The first
exchanges are offered, Greigor’s chains flicking out with strobe-like
speed, Mortius’ blade deflecting at an angle, denying the weapons
any purchase.
Then Greigor is upon him, chains slashing down in wave after
wave of brutal attacks, each one carving great swathes from the
mat of drones below the combatants. Mortius slips past each one,
receiving scratches, cuts, but no serious injury. He lashes out with
his left leg, his armoured shin slamming into Greigor’s slender form.
It barely shakes the monster, but the power of the attack is such
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that it forces him back an inch or two, and that is when Mortius
commits to his attack.
He spins the glaive in his palm, the haft knocking the chains
wide, and follows through with a deft pommel jab that comes up
into Greigor’s sternum. The robed figure is knocked back a step, and
now Mortius stamps on the bottom of the grey fabric, holding the
creature in place for the next blow. Greigor whips his chains down
towards the jade mask, but the experienced warrior sees the feint
for what it is, and simply leans slightly to the left, bringing his glaive
down low to counter the knee that is suddenly launching towards
his solar plexus. There is a cracking sound as cartilage and bone
gives way, but no pain is evident on the half-face.
“You cannot win, blade-master. I know the moves you will make.
After all, we have stood together many times before now. And I fear
no death, feel no pain. You are lost indeed.”
Mortius shakes his head. “Fiend. You who have no fear of death
have no drive to live. Only in the instant of fear can one truly bring
battle to a foe. I taught you that, too. I admit fear, but never defeat.”
He swings the glaive into a defensive pose, locked between one
arm and his back and sweeps Greigor’s chains out wide. His other
hand sketches a symbol in mid-air and then flashes forward into
a brutal cross punch, followed immediately with a reverse elbow
that catches the undead thing in the neck. Then there is a flurry of
movement that leaves Mortius supporting his entire weight on his
glaive. Greigor’s chains, seemingly possessing a life of their own,
have hooked into two plates of Mortius’ lacquered armour and
peeled them away. Blood runs from a pair of gouges in his flesh and
his breath steams in the cold of the bright winter dawn.
The skirmishers have clashed. There are screams from below,
begging for aid, for mercy. None is forthcoming. Every time another
scream is choked off a flash of pain crosses the eyes of the man in
the green mask. The wound is telling, his movements are slower
and Greigor exploits every opening with brutal efficiency. Mortius
tenses, knowing that each moment could end him.
His glaive flashes up, angled to throw the sun into Greigor’s eyes,
and thrusts down in an overhand stab. Greigor squints slightly and
slaps the blow aside. He launches another flurry of figure-of-eight
swings, driving Mortius back. The creature that was known in life
as Greigor is fast – too fast – and inhumanly strong. It follows the
blows with a kick that sends Mortius scrambling backward towards
the edge of the platform. Only a brief handhold on one of the
hooked chains saves him from an ocean of teeth and claws. Now
Mortius is forced to defend, again and again. He cannot bring to
bear the glaive that earned him his title. Greigor’s upper lip curves in
a grotesque mockery of a smile. Mortius falls, the glaive wrenched
from his grip and thrown into the horde.
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“Your troops are engaged, Green Mask. They look to you for
inspiration. What then, when they see you fall?” The wave elongates
and the platform is carried high over the centre of the battlefield,
where all can see the red armoured man kneeling at the feet of the
half-alive creature that brings death and pain to their shores.
Just over a mile away, her eyes shining, Mortius’ eldest daughter
claps her hands twice. Signal flags flutter gently and in a simple,
economic motion, each warrior frees his or her highly polished shield
from its burlap covering. And to the screaming Greigor, in the centre
of a burning cone of light, it appears that the sun herself has come
down at the bidding of the man in the green mask, who is suddenly
standing again, bloodied but not beaten. The last thing the corpsething sees is a pair of armoured thumbs appearing out of the glare.
Then it sees nothing at all.
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You have come to the end of the first chapter of Suncaller
by B. John Shaw Liddle. We hope that you have enjoyed
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