by D L Frizzell
He squeezed the pike in his left hand and felt the rough grain of the wood through his glove. It was a weapon he’d made hurriedly with his machete, and was satisfied it would do the job. Being an expert huntsman had its advantages - If the escapee wouldn't come out willingly, Redland could get him out unwillingly.
Redland looked around at the numerous mounds of dirt in the area and spotted several with pointed crests. Those would be the breather holes the bog-dogs made to keep air circulating in their tunnels. It was a common hunting technique to cover the holes to draw the disgusting animals into the open. For those desperate enough to eat bog-dog meat, they weren’t difficult to trap.
Redland knelt back down and looked sourly at the mud around him. He took off his right glove and tucked it under his belt. Suppressing his disgust, he thrust his hand deep into the mound and grabbed a handful of muck. The stuff was rancid, the smell growing thick around him. A swarm of bogflies congregated around his hand as he formed the fecal mud into a ball. Ignoring the insects, he placed the stinking blob on the dirt in front of him and reached into the hole to grab more. It took several minutes of taking shallow breaths and blinking through stench-induced tears, but he finally made a good supply of mudballs. He tossed some dry dirt over the hole he'd made and wiped his hand on the ground. At least he wasn’t crawling inside the stinking crap like the escaped prisoner.
It was pretty obvious the tunnels had been abandoned by the bog-dogs weeks earlier. Even they could not survive long in the concentrated smell of their own feces, so they frequently moved on when the odor got bad enough. Redland could only imagine how bad the smell was inside the tunnels. He took satisfaction in knowing the escapee brought this on himself.
He looked at all the pointed mounds and started with the furthest one. He tossed one of the mudballs at it, narrowly missing. He tried another one, this one resulting in a satisfactory plop. That meant the hole was sealed. He did the same with the other holes, leaving the one closest to him open, and waited.
It was only a short time before Redland heard a muffled snap beneath one of the covered mounds. He perked up and listened for any other sounds that would give him the exact position of the escapee. That’s when he saw a couple of fingers pushing the mud back out of the airhole. Of course, it was just his rotten luck that it was one of the mounds furthest away from his location. He readied the pike and began making his way across the mud. He put the smell and the buzzing flies out of his thoughts, focusing solely on the mound ahead of him. The fingers continued to widen the hole, and Redland knew the escapee didn’t realize he was coming.
Redland stopped in his tracks when he felt the ground go soft. The tangleroots that kept the bog from flooding the den were too thin. Before he could step back, they collapsed under his weight and he sank to his crotch. He saw the fingers disappear and heard movement as the prisoner tried to put some distance between them. Redland struggled free of the hole he'd made, now unconcerned with stealth or cleanliness, and rushed the mound.
All movement under the mud had stopped again, and the prisoner had either suffocated or knew what his pursuer was doing. Redland swatted at the swarm of bogflies with his hat, enraged at them and everything else at the moment. Now unconcerned with the condition of his expensive boots, he kicked a huge smear of mud over the breather hole.
The escapee wouldn't get far now. Bog-dogs didn't grow more than a meter in length, and the escapee was over two meters tall. That meant the tunnels would be cramped. All Redland had to do was watch for the ground to heave upward. When he finally saw it, he only had to take a few steps.
Redland straddled the spot and plunged the pike into the mud. It passed easily through the tangleroots into the tunnel below and encountered a new kind of resistance. He knew from past experience that he’d skewered the escapee, as the sound of separating bones was familiar to him. He was surprised the man didn’t cry out. It didn’t matter. He was no different than a speared fish at that point. Still, just to indulge himself a bit, Redland pulled up hard on the pike and heard an agonizing grunt. That made all the flies and the mud and the smell worth it. He unsheathed the machete from his left thigh and sliced the tangleroots around the pike. The blow had been a fatal one, that was for sure, but seeing the man’s face before he died would be the icing on this shitty cake. Once the roots were sufficiently cut, he re-sheathed the machete and pulled upward on the pike with all his strength.
The pike had impaled the escapee downward through his shoulder, extending through his abdomen. Redland was surprised he'd gotten the escapee in an upright position. He wouldn't have expected the tunnel to have that much room. At any rate, it made for an easier job of pulling him out. He stopped lifting when he’d gotten the escapee’s chest and shoulders above the surrounding muck, and then clucked with appreciation at his handiwork. The man's arms were pinned to his sides against the tangleroots, and he was unable to move. Though he was done for, he still struggled.
The escapee's head was covered by a hood, unsurprisingly soaked with dark slime. Redland scowled, unable to grip it at first, but then found a seam and pulled it back to reveal the face underneath.
The steel intensity in the escapee’s speckled green eyes gave him away - he was a T'Neth. Redland instinctively backed away and tried to piece together the implications. He’d never heard of a T'Neth being defeated by a single opponent before. Why had the big man run when he could have easily defeated Redland face-to-face? A T’Neth certainly didn’t require a gun to pulverize an armed opponent. They were born killers, with all weakness burned out of them by the radioactive northern deserts.
Realizing he would only have a few seconds to get answers, he approached the dying man. "How did you get out of the prison?" Redland asked. Then he thought of a better question. "How did someone like you get captured in the first place?"
The T'Neth's labored breathing came with increasing effort. Gurgling sounds were followed by a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. He didn't say a word, but stared into Redland's eyes. Redland knew it was pointless to interrogate him. T'Neth were notoriously tight-lipped. Well-known as deadly mercenaries, they roamed the territories in pairs. They took work from anyone who would pay, though their loyalties never seemed to stem from the money. They were, by far, the toughest fighters he'd ever heard of. He would have reconsidered tracking this man by himself if he’d known.
"Where is your partner?" Redland asked. No answer. "Dead?" Still no answer.
The T'Neth whispered something too quietly to understand. Redland knelt and put his ear next to the man’s mouth, unconcerned about any last-minute tricks. He whispered again.
“Bury you?” Redland asked.
The man’s head lolled against the pike as he nodded.
"I can do that much, at least," Redland said, a hint of respect in his voice. With that, the T'Neth's eyes glazed over and became lifeless.
There was only one thing left for Redland to do. He pulled the T'Neth's muscular right arm free from the mud and pulled the sleeve back.
“What the hell?”
There was no identification shackle. He checked the mud around the body. There was little chance that even a T'Neth could remove one. The hardened titanium locks were welded on at the time a prisoner was in-processed at Ovalsheer Prison. The only way to take them off was by removing the hand, which is how Redland normally did it. Even if the T'Neth had managed to saw the shackle off, there would be scars where it rubbed against his skin or burn marks at the weld point. There were no signs of either on this man’s arm. Redland stood and paced angrily.
"You were positively identified as the man leaving the prison," Redland told the dead T'Neth. "You have the same features, the same clothes. The guards followed you until I got there. I followed you. I shot you."
Redland tore the T'Neth's outer cloak open. Sure enough, there was a bullet hole over his heart. Redland overlooked that his bullet had struck its target precisely where he aimed, and he wasn't in the mood to wonder why the man hadn't d
ied instantly. He wanted to know how he'd ended up chasing the wrong man. There was no way this T'Neth could have been the prisoner in Ovalsheer. He stared at the wound he'd made just the day before. The blood had stopped flowing, leaving a crimson wound behind. The escapee must have gone a different direction while the prison guards took this poor fool for their target.
Redland looked around to see if anyone was watching, though he knew there wouldn’t be anybody near this place if they could help it. The last thing he needed was for someone to see him take down the wrong person, so it was a justified precaution. The only living thing within sight was Jaeger, who grazed calmly at the edge of the bog, unaware of any problems.
"This was their mistake, not mine," Redland growled. "If anyone's gonna take the fall, it's the guards. I'm still gettin' paid, one way or the other, because they were too stupid to finger the right guy."
He searched the T'Neth, hoping to find some clue to explain his presence. There was a piece of vellum inside the torn cloak, and it slipped out easily. Redland unfolded it to its full size and examined it. It was a map. It measured nearly two meters on each side. It wasn’t just a map of the territories - It was a map of Arion, the entire planet. Redland recognized the habitable regions from the equator to the forty-fifth parallel, the desert areas that covered the remainder of the northern hemisphere, and the ice-covered southern hemisphere.
No territories were marked on the map - it seemed to focus solely on geographic features. Everything from the great volcano at the north pole to the crater at the south pole was drawn in intricate detail. The map was old and had a variety markings on it. There were numerous straight lines drawn across the map. Many of them ran horizontally or vertically, but didn't match up to the normal lines of latitude and longitude. Only a few ran uninterrupted from one edge of the map to another, while the rest were incomplete. Some lines were offset from the rest, slightly angled, and broken around areas like the Crumbles or the Riftlands. None of it made sense to Redland.
Then he noticed that all the major cities were identified on the map. It only took him a moment to find his own city. Ovalsheer, Capital of the Sheers Territory, was easy to see because of the checkerboard pattern of bluffs that surrounded it. There was some writing below the city that seemed to identify it, not words but some sort of code. Ovalsheer Prison was also marked. A horizontal line ran from the prison toward the west, ending at the middle of a bog - the same bog he was currently standing in.
Redland got the sudden impression he wasn’t hunting down an escaped prisoner. He put his finger on the end of the line and traced along the direction it was heading. He saw that the line would pass to the south of Celestial City. "Damn,” Redland said to himself, re-folding the map and putting it in his breast pocket.
The marshal looked at the dead T'Neth and wondered what to do. Since he’d told the dying man he would bury him, he decided to follow through on that promise. It would be a good idea to hide the evidence, anyway. He checked the rest of the T’Neth’s cloak, retrieved a pouch of gold coins and pocketed them. Finding nothing else, he wrangled the body into the ground with the pike. He stomped the mud down around it, breaking the pike off when he finished.
“Waste of my damn time,” Redland muttered, and then remembered what else he needed to do. Luckily, both of Arion’s moons were up, which made the date easier to figure. Little Hand was almost directly overhead, while Big Hand was just coming over the eastern horizon. That meant there was less than a week to month's end. He pulled a necker out of his duster and wiped his brow. When he saw brown streaks on the cloth, he realized that he was covered from head to foot in the dung-soaked mud. He swore, then sloshed his way over to Jaeger.
Redland tossed his necker away and dug a fresh one out of his saddlebag. A swarm of flies had followed him, prompting Jaeger to slap at them with his tail. "Don't blame me," Redland told the horse. "I don't like it, either."
Jaeger huffed and shook his head.
“I don't have enough charcoal to get myself completely clean," Redland explained to the horse, "but there's a river past that ridge to the south. Might as well get rinsed off and head to Celestial City.” He snapped his holster and mounted Jaeger. "Got some business there, anyway."
Chapter Four
Alex walked across the university plaza toward the science building. He didn’t have to see the floppy-haired sophomore sneaking up behind him. Cale Biedrik made plenty of noise from fifty meters away.
Cale slapped Alex's shoulder, and looked disappointed when Alex didn't startle. “Watcha doin’?”
“Hi Cale,” Alex replied. “I'm heading to the science building for rock-climbing practice with Norio. Want to join me?”
“Only if I don’t have to do any rock climbing myself,” Cale said.
"That kinda defeats the purpose of coming along," Alex replied.
"Breaking my neck defeats all my purposes," Cale pointed out. "But I'll think of nice words to say at your funeral in case you fall."
Alex shrugged. For someone who was raised to tend crops on the cliff faces of the Upright Meadowlands, Cale was strangely afraid of heights. It didn't stop him from tagging along, though.
“I thought Norio was a gardener,” Cale said.
“Yeah,” Alex acknowledged. "He does all kinds of things."
“They aren't related," Cale argued. “What does rock climbing have to do with gardening?”
“You should know,” Alex replied. “Maybe he learned it in the Upright Meadowlands?”
"No," Cale shot back, annoyed that Alex was referring to his phobia. "We used ladders there. We didn't need to climb anything."
"You didn't like the ladders, either," Alex reminded him.
“Nope.”
Cale spun about as they went, gawking at the debris and foliage spread by the guster. He didn't notice a branch in his path, as he was looking sideways at the time, and tripped over it. After saving himself with some awkward gyrations, Cale laughed once, then continued walking without giving his acrobatics a second thought. "I heard you got sent to the garrison commander the other day," he said.
"Yeah," Alex replied.
“I told you running on top of the wall would get you in trouble.” Cale smiled in anticipation of a good story. "So, you got in trouble, right?" He always liked stories about other people getting in trouble.
"No."
"What?!" Cale shouted. "I heard the guster almost blew you off the wall, and the guards had to rescue you."
"That's not what happened."
"But you admit you got sent to the commander," Cale wagged a finger at Alex. "Are you telling me Colonel Seneca didn't give you probation or something?"
"No," Alex replied. "He gave me permission to run on the wall whenever I want to."
Cale stopped in his tracks. "What?"
Alex paused, knowing his friend wouldn't wait patiently for the details. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an envelope with the militia insignia emblazoned across the front. He opened it slowly, glancing once at Cale to make him wait a second longer. When Cale huffed in frustration, Alex relented and held out the order. Cale grabbed it and began reading it.
"Order issued to garrison..." Cale said, then skimmed the rest quietly. When he was done, he looked at Alex in confusion. "What does this mean?"
"Just like I said," Alex replied. "I get to run the wall every day if I want to. The only difference is that I'm supposed to lead a squad of militiamen around the entire wall at least once a week."
"Why?" Cale asked.
"To show them how to do it," Alex said. "Seneca thinks that if I can do it, they should too."
"You’re not in trouble at all?" Cale seemed disappointed. "It sounds more like punishment for the guards."
"Well, I do have to give a report of conditions outside the city whenever I run on the wall," Alex offered. "That's a kind of punishment, I guess."
“I swear, you get away with everything,” Cale sulked.
They continued toward the scien
ce building, where they saw Keeva, Cale's girlfriend, waiting at the corner. A short girl with curly blond hair, she was watching the groundskeepers clean up debris. As they approached her, her eyes kept flashing to Cale. Not once did she look at Alex.
"Hi, Keeva," Cale smiled. She looked at her feet and gave him a weak smile in return, then stepped close to lean against his chest and put her arms around him.
"Hi, Keeva," Alex said.
Keeva gave Alex a look he didn't comprehend. She turned away so he couldn't see her any more, then mumbled something under her breath.
Cale gave Alex a shrug. "Can I meet you there?" Cale asked. Alex nodded and continued towards the science building alone.
Chapter Five
Daigre looked up into the sky and noticed Big Hand was about to overtake Arion's other artificial moon, Small Hand. He had a routine of synchronizing his pocket watch at the beginning of every month when the moons crossed paths overhead, so he retrieved a sextant from his horse’s saddlebag to take a sighting. He adjusted the mirrors until both Arion's satellites were superimposed on the desert's eastern horizon. Satisfied the angles were accurate, he locked the dials and calculated the time and date from the metal arc on the bottom of the device. His watch, though normally correct, was off by several hours. This wasn't surprising, since their mission brought them thousands of kilometers from their homeland. He corrected the watch and returned the sextant to the saddlebag.
Daigre had considered leaving his sextant at home in the Jovian Nation when they began their journey. As most people did not track time, it might have seemed like a vain accessory. Certainly it was out of place with the image he portrayed to strangers. He wore a simple, badly-patched tunic that was worn from constant traveling. Attached to a leather strap around his waist was a walking stick. It looked like a dried section of branch, only a meter long and charred black on the end. It curved slightly, looking as if the only thing it was good for was stoking a fire. Anyone seeing Daigre would assume he was just another wanderer. It was an image he cultivated, save for the few prized items he secretly carried.