Legion of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

nape of my neck stand on end.
    I wasn’t the only one to feel ill at ease. The ranks of mourners behind me seemed just as troubled. Several of them were looking anxiously about them, glancing over their shoulders or craning their necks as they peered nervously into the shadows between the trees. A member of the Lampblackers crew, the characteristic ring of candles round the broad brim of his barrel-hat flickering, suddenly started back, his teeth bared with fear – before gathering himself self-consciously. A Tallow Gang member pulled a yellow handkerchief from the pocket of his high-buttoned waxed acton and patted it to his brow.
    Then I noticed Lol – the tough who had challenged me and Will the previous day. Our gaze met, and I saw that his eyes were filled with terror.
    ‘This place makes my skin crawl,’ I heard Will whisper.
    ‘Me too, Will,’ I whispered back. ‘And
they
don’t like it either,’ I added, nodding back at the two stallions at the gate, who were pawing the ground and whinnying nervously as the hapless carriage driver struggled to keep them from bolting.
    The stewards, meanwhile, were darting between us, giving instructions. We took our places round the grave in a wide circle, the twelve gangs forming themselves into a dozen narrow wedges, like the five-minute sections of a great clock. Will and I stood with the Ratcatchers, our coalstack hats clutched in our hands, directly behind the vast marble headstone, which was fresh from the stonecutter’s yard, chiselled and polished that very morning. It marked the Emperor’s last resting place. Before us stood the vicar, nodding to each of the mourners in turn as they arrived.
    The Reverend Simeon Spool was his name. He was a stooped and desiccated individual with thin, flaxen hair, parted low on one side,and that bounced up and down on his head like a square of plaited straw every time he nodded. From what I’d heard, he’d once had a church on Gallup Row full of fine gentlemen and generous, charitable ladies. But a love of Congreve’s port wine and gambling on racing snails had proved his undoing. The archbishop had dealt with the resulting scandal by sending him to a rundown chapel in the quays. There, he’d kept himself to himself. But when the gangs snapped their fingers, he jumped. The good reverend was clearly nervous – but then who wouldn’t be in this gloomy graveyard, surrounded by Gatling Quays’ most fearsome inhabitants?
    ‘G-g-good m-m-morning, M-Mr Mc-Mc-Mc-Mc …’
    With the other pallbearers, Thump laid the coffin gently down beside the grave amongst the wreaths and bouquets already delivered and waiting. Then he slowly straightened up, flexed his shoulders andsmiled at the Reverend Spool.
    ‘Mc …
Con
nell,’ said the hapless vicar, spitting the name out at last. His face was so pale, it looked as though the Flour Bag Mob had paid him a recent visit.
    ‘If such a morning as this can be called “good,” Vicar,’ said Thump, nodding down at the coffin solemnly.
    ‘Ind-d-d-d-d-d-deed,’ stuttered the vicar, his tongue hammering against his teeth like a woodpecker’s beak, while his cheeks and ears abruptly turned the same colour as the purple sash that hung down over his priestly robes.
    I have to say, given the state of him, I didn’t hold up much hope for the service – and I knew that Thump McConnell would not take kindly to the Emperor’s sendoff being spoiled by the vicar’s inability to string a sentence together. Yet, from the moment he began to recite the burial rites, the Reverend Spool’s voice was transformed into one as clear, asdeep, and as unbroken as a tolling bell.
    ‘We have come here today, before God,’ he intoned, ‘to remember our brother and to commit his body …’
    Above our heads, a raven spiralled down out of the sky, letting out a loud rasping shriek that made the vicar and several of the onlookers jump. It was followed by several more of its noisy brothers. The hoarse, screeching