Fyre & Stone (snippet)

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Stone pounded along the cobbled streets, his breath coming in short, hard and cold mouthfuls. Strange things ran through his mind when his body was at its limits; he considered that if he hadn't spent so much on feeding himself this week, he could have bought new shoes. What he was wearing now were well past their useful lifetime. He could feel each of the cobbles, painfully, as they seemed to rise up into his thin soles.

Ahead, a small darkly dressed figure continued to pull away from him with every stride. The figure took a sharp left. The streets, close behind Dublin's North Wall docks, where the Royal Canal met the River Liffey, were laid out in a grid. He knew them well. His lungs gave an extra burn as he tried to fill them and his feet ached as he swivelled and turned left into a parallel laneway, which led up to the new railway tracks. He passed no one as he ran past the terraced houses. It was too cold even for the most dedicated of criminals to be out this late at night. The low small-windowed houses that were either side of him, gave no illumination onto the narrow street. It was expensive to run the lamps, so the people who lived around here went to bed for the long dark nights of winter. Luckily, he had grown up on streets like these, and his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness; a near full moon at his back helped.

He got a second wind just as he could see the end of the street. It opened out onto the much wider Sheriff Street, just behind the main railway station in the north of the city. Here his quarry would have to emerge too. He gave one extra push with his legs, wanting to beat or at least equal who he was trying to catch. He hoped the man would slow down, now that his pursuer was not directly behind him. He sprinted onto Sheriff Street, hitting the big new cobbles hard with his sore feet as he did.

There was a bit more life here. A few of the houses had their lamps still lit and a few fires still burned, grey smoke rising into the black still night. On either end of the street two gas lamps gave out thin yellow spheres of light. Three men were huddled in an archway, one that supported the station above. He was immediately aware of them.

Stone could feel his body throbbing as he watched his own heavy breaths blow out like the smoke from the chimneys above. He turned his head sharply left then right; there was no movement on either end of the street.

'Lost are ye?' came the sound of a heavy Northside accent.

Stone didn't answer straight away, his keen eyes were still scanning the street for any sign of movement.

'I said are ye lost, sir; need some directions?' a second heavy accent joined in.

Stone didn't need to have his eyes on them, he could sense their movement; they had come out from under the arch. He knew their type too, opportunistic scum.

'I know exactly where I am,' Stone replied, his breath still struggling a bit, his own rough Dublin accent tempered only with the pronunciation of an educated man. Not that the three men noticed this, but they did pause their progress toward him, perhaps taken aback by his confident tone.

'This is the Northside, friend, you'd wanna be careful where yer walkin' 'round here,' the first voice said as a clear threat.

Stone swivelled on his cheap heels and flashed back the body of his overcoat. The men's eyes dropped instantly to the two very large hunting knives strapped around Stone's midriff.

'Oh, I'm very careful,' Stone replied. He was going to add something, a threat of his own, perhaps out of frustration, but probably out of habit. He didn't get the chance, something moved across the yellow sphere of light to his right.

Stone was running before the three men had a chance to think about what they were going to do; they just stood in the cold and watched him pelt down the cobbles toward the front of the station.