The Orphaned Worlds

by Michael Cobley

  ‘I don’t think we’re that far from Belskirnir,’ Greg said, ‘but we’ll no’ get there before nightfall.’ He pointed to a large tree further ahead, its bole twisted around a big boulder, its lower branches creating a kind of natural shelter. ‘That would be a good place to make camp. What d’ye think?’

  Kao Chih peered at it. ‘It certainly appears comfortable, Gregory, but there is still plenty of light – should we not keep moving, to make the good time tomorrow?’

  Greg shrugged and was about to reply when, without warning, shots came from off in the dense wood. Automatic fire crackled, splinters flew from the cart, leaves and twigs spun from intervening bushes. Panic-stricken, Greg had dived off the path, scrambling for cover behind a huge, tilted rock, fumbling for his own weapon, the 35-calibre that Rory had doggedly taught him to use. He returned fire, a few unaimed shots before realising that he didn’t know where Kao Chih was, whether he had gone into the bushes on the other side or had fled along the path. Greg was about to call out his name in a stage whisper when there were shouts and the sound of running feet drawing near from left and right.

  Fear assailed him as the hunters’ footsteps slowed and an eerie silence fell over the dale. Seconds ticked by with neither sight nor sound of Kao Chih, but Greg did catch a glimpse of one of his pursuers, a burly, bearded woodsman with hard, flinty eyes beneath a battered bush hat. Convinced that the ones he couldn’t see were even closer, he decided it was time to get the hell out of there.

  Behind the big, tilted rock, clumps of tangled undergrowth concealed an incline leading up to a ridge beyond which lay a drop which he remembered from their earlier progress along the track. Keeping low, he crept up to the edge and over to see a steep, leafy slope broken by isolated bushes and protruding rocks, leading down to a wide, densely wooded gorge which ran southwards, back the way he and Kao Chih had come two days before. Greg crouched on a jutting rock, unsure of his next move, staring across the leafy treetops, darkening as the sun dipped towards the horizon. Then a shout came from off to the right – one of the ambushers was standing on the ridge about a hundred yards away, calling out to the others as he raised a rifle and took aim.

  Fear took over and Greg dived forward, rolling downslope a short distance before regaining his feet and continuing his descent at a striding, plunging run. Just as he passed into the shadows of the tree line, he slipped on a muddy patch. He feet flew out, a jumble of rocks loomed and he flailed madly, luckily catching hold of the stems of a sturdy bush which slowed his plummet. His back and side were soaked with dew and plastered with mud but with his pursuers coming down after him he ignored the mess and headed deeper into the trees.

  For the next ten hours or more, Greg dodged and hid, crept and climbed, skulked and lay low. It was a strange, fitful hunt which continued on past evening and into the night. It was never completely dark in a Darien forest – ulby roots, a common species of parasitic tuber, shed a pale yellow-green radiance, while ineka beetles had carapaces that gave off a soft blue glow. Together, their emanations gave the glades of Darien a curiously spectral ambience, a kind of peaceful hush as if the entire forest were holding its breath. Tonight, though, the patchy glows conspired with Greg’s fugitive state of mind to concoct an eerie, slightly foreboding atmosphere.

  Dawn was cold and misty, the first moments of sunrise spreading like a watery gleam through the undergrowth. Greg straightened from the hillside notch where he’d been resting and peered out through a veil of blackleaf vine. From the gorge he had gradually worked his way via gullies and footprint-masking streams back round to the route that he and Kao Chih had been following. The notch gave him a view of densely wooded ground sloping down towards the track. South was to his left and a mile or so back that way was where they’d been ambushed. Northwards, the trees thinned a little and the rutted track wound through them to a hillside, curving round it and out of sight. Somewhere among those low forest hills was Belskirnir, where Greg was supposed to meet a go-between sent by Alexandr Vashutkin, the last surviving member of Sundstrom’s cabinet, still holding out in Trond . . .

  As the minutes passed the day brightened and a few creaturecalls sounded from the canopy and branches overhead, peeps, whistles and scraping squawks, as if to greet the sky’s telltale pearly glow, sure sign that bright sunlight would soon be burning away the mists. Greg peered into the trees, scanning the distance, studying the undergrowth for movement. It was a couple of hours since he last sighted one of his pursuers, a lean, bearded man with a rifle who emerged from a thicket to the north and stalked along parallel to the track before disappearing off to the south.

  Greg nodded, resolved that it was time to go and find Kao Chih.

  He climbed out of the notch and crouched in a nearby clump of beadberry bushes for a moment, plotting in his head a route across the wooded slope. Then he crept forward, heading towards the closest tree, and was four paces away when he was grabbed from behind and thrust to the ground. Gasping in fear, he struggled against the weight on his back and fought with one hand through garment layers for the pistol sitting in an inside pocket. Amid all this effort, he almost failed to hear his assailant hoarsely repeating his name.

  ‘Greg . . . Greg! – it’s me, Alexei . . .!’

  Suddenly hearing and recognising the voice, he ceased moving and the weight shifted off his back. Breathing heavily, he half sat up as a grinning Alexei Firmanov sprawled down on the grass next to him. He was a lanky, dark-haired Rus with prominent cheekbones and a narrow chin, and was garbed in a green forest coat over dark grey hunter fatigues.

  ‘What . . . the hell . . . are you doing here?’ Greg said.

  ‘They’ve got lookouts posted all along the trail to Belskirnir, my friend,’ Alexei said. ‘They would have had you like that.’

  ‘I see,’ Greg said, glancing round at the bushy slope. ‘Any idea who they are?’

  ‘Thugs and nattjegers from the Eastern Towns, we reckoned. Just after you left Taloway, a carrier pinbeak arrived from High Lochiel with word that a local Brolturan lackey was hiring toughs for a journey into the wilds. Later that same day, one of Chel’s high-crag watchers spotted a dirij coming in from the Crystal River boundary quite far off and heading for these hills. Less than half an hour later it was aloft and swinging back towards the coast. Rory and Chel assumed that the worst might happen …’

  ‘And here ye are.’

  ‘Nikolai is here, too,’ Alexei said. ‘He went after the ones who dragged Kao Chih away. He’s safe, by the way.’

  Greg breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Or whoever’s in charge, da? Well, there were only two captors – for Nikolai this is no problem. But we have many problems, sitting out there, waiting for us, so we must go the scenic route, yes?’

  ‘How scenic?’ said Greg. ‘D’ye mean doubling back around they hills?’

  ‘I mean go over them.’ Alexei grinned. ‘Is not so bad, and quicker too.’

  Greg frowned. The hills to the south might be comparatively low but they were steep and craggy. Scaling them would be demanding and risky.

  ‘Okay then, aye,’ he said. ‘But we’ll have to keep an eye out for any scissortails – a bite from one of those wee buggers and you’ll never play the balalaika again.’

  After a stealthy, wary progress back through the forest, following the upward slope, it took well over an hour to climb to the hill’s rocky summit. By then the sun was out and they were sweating as they stopped to rest on a hot stone ledge facing north. Alexei produced a small battered wooden telescope and surveyed the woods they’d left behind. After a few moments he gave a satisfied grunt and turned to look north. Greg sat in the sun’s warmth, thinking about his mother and brothers, now safely ensconced in a mountain camp south of the Eastern Towns. His mother had been angry at being sent away from danger, even though she knew it was a rational move. His brothers, Ian and Ned, were likewise unhappy but resigned – Ian intended to get together a company of former Darien Volunteer Force
troopers and Ned knew that his medical skills would be fully occupied.

  I still wish you were all with me, he thought, staring out at the dark, dense expanse of the Forest of Arawn. But we know what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket …

  Alexei handed him the long glass and he raised it to survey the land. The treetop canopy was an unbroken sea of verdant green that swept onwards and away, swathing every dip and rise of the land before fetching up against the Utgard Barricades, two hundred miles of imposing sheer cliffs which were just visible as a dark grey line on the horizon. Beyond, the peaks of an immense mountain range faded away into purple opacity.

  Gazing over the forest he suddenly realised that you could lose entire armies beneath its foliage, battalions, regiments, legions, hordes, completely hidden from the eye, their movements a mystery, their tactics clandestine, their strategy covert.

  Now all we need is an army.

  Alexei pointed to a nearer landmark, a flat-topped hill protruding from the forest a couple of miles to the north, one of a group of hills.

  ‘There is Osip’s Hat – under it is Belskirnir. Nikolai said to meet him at the top of a waterfall near the eastern slope.’ He looked at Greg. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Well, I’ve no’ had much sleep and nothing to eat but we’re kind of short on choices so … aye, let’s go.’

  Alexei laughed and gave his shoulder a comradely punch. ‘You will be fine – Rory says you are tough and I believe him.’

  ‘Must have a word with him when we get back,’ Greg said as he clambered after his companion, heading down the other side of the craggy hill. As they approached the tree line, a flock of fowics came down to investigate, landing heavily on thin upper branches and scrambling along on all fours. Fowics were like flying squirrels back on Earth, except that their forelimb wings were more fully adapted for flying rather than gliding, and their heads, ears and snouts had a distinctly feline appearance. Alexei dug some hard tack out of a waist pouch and held out a few fragments. One of them calmly sauntered down its branch, tiny beady eyes fixed on the prize, snatched it with its teeth then leapt and wriggled up into the leafy shadows.

  Greg laughed. ‘If they can get any sustenance out of that stuff, they’re probably evolving faster than we are!’

  Not all forest denizens were as harmless. During the two-hour trudge through an increasingly swampy forest, they saw a tree nest of pepper-wasps, around which they detoured, and more than once hurried past yellow sniperviles, bulge-eyed lizards that could spit poison lethal to Humans. By the time they crossed a brook to dry, rising terrain, Greg felt edgy and twitchy and was longing to return to the high valleys of the Kentigerns.

  ‘This had better be worth it,’ he muttered, following Alexei over a fallen tree. ‘When we walk in there, Vashutkin’s guy better have, I don’t know, a vial of babble dust made especially for Kuros, or plans for that compound they’re building at Port Gagarin, or … well, something.’

  Alexei was puzzled. ‘You don’t know what this meeting is for?’

  ‘No idea, just that Vashutkin said it was so vital that I had to be there in person.’

  ‘Ah! – I know, is a surprise birthday party, perhaps!’

  Greg smiled and shook his head. ‘Not for another four months, but nice try.’

  At the crest of the slope they suddenly heard a rushing sound above the breeze that rustled through the trees. The ground ahead rose in large rocky steps, mossy stairs for a giant. Overhead, the dense canopy of the Forest of Arawn continued unbroken in all directions as Alexei led the way around a steep bluff, pointing out the rippervine which hung down it from above. Pushing through a tangle of bushes, they emerged near the rocky bank of a stream, several dozen yards from where it poured over a cliff edge, a waterfall plunging to the forest below. Then two figures stepped out of the vegetation on the other side and minutes later Greg was shaking hands with a grinning Kao Chih while Nikolai Firmanov explained.

  ‘What a pair of daruki,’ he said. ‘Some of them know their way through woods, but those two must be coastal boys. But Kao Chih? – there is more here than the eye sees.’

  ‘I was … fortunate,’ Kao Chih said. ‘I knock out one with my skull’ – he mimed with a backward jerk of the head – ‘get free, take his gun and knock out the other, then I think I will rescue you and I put on the guns and knives, then I tie up those kwai, then … Nikolai arrives and we go spying.’

  Nikolai, the older but shorter of the Firmanov brothers, smiled and patted Kao Chih on the shoulder. ‘Steady nerves, this one. All ready to go to war. So I told him that my brother had gone to fetch you and meet later by waterfall but on way here we get close to main gate to Belskirnir, at night.’ He shook his head. ‘Not good, Greg – they are watching gate, around clock. Only other way in is through one of Van Krieger’s private doors.’

  Peter Van Krieger’s father was one of the original founders of Belskirnir and the son had maintained and increased that position of authority by buying out the descendants of the other two founders. Rory had told Greg that Van Krieger was now an ageing, piratical figure who relied on lieutenants to run the camp, having no offspring of his own.

  ‘Will that be a problem?’ Greg said.

  Nikolai gave an amused half-shrug. ‘Diehards have had dealings with him in past – should be okay.’

  ‘Should?’ Greg said.

  ‘Will be okay,’ said Nikolai. ‘Van Krieger makes a point of being even-handed, and makes sure his men are too.’

  Greg remained unconvinced but when they reached the bushy summit of Osip’s Hill after a two-hour forest trek, the welcome they received from the three guards there seemed to bear out Nikolai’s words. All wore similar medleys of camouflage, leather and hessian, and carried ageing breech-loaders sporting this or that modification. The eldest, a bald man with a tattooed scalp, greeted the Firmanovs with sardonic familiarity and after hearing Nikolai’s brief hints at some kind of trouble with bandits out in the forest, he beckoned them all to follow as he opened the door into the hill.

  The way led through a maze of passages, split-levels and side tunnels. Greg had never been to Belskirnir before and initially tried to memorise their route, giving up when it became clear that their guide was taking turnings meant to confuse. Stretches of the cold passages were lit by tallow lamps and quite soon Greg began to hear singing. Moments later they emerged onto a hewn ledge overlooking a wide cavern resounding with a barrage of voices and noises from the hundreds of men and women occupying the stools and tables spread across the floor of what was essentially one big tavern. The next thing he noticed was the warm fug of body odour, weed smoke, stale beer and cooked food, at which his stomach rumbled. Then he saw the market stalls around the walls, some of which were grilling or boiling or frying a variety of frontier dishes.

  ‘I have to eat,’ he told Alexei. ‘I’m just about ready to munch my own toenails!’

  Alexei nodded. ‘Sure, of course – where are we to meet this guy again?’

  ‘Some place called the Lifeboat.’

  ‘Ah yes – it’s over there.’

  Greg followed his outstretched hand to see a long gallery on the opposite wall crowded with revellers who seemed to be singing several different songs at once. Nikolai nodded and relayed this to their guide, who wished them well and left them to it.

  The walls of the cavern had many hollows, some containing little shops or sleep spaces while others had odd, lopsided huts jutting from them. As they drew near to the Lifeboat, those within began singing a new song in fairly ordered unison, and to Greg’s surprise he recognised it as ‘Regin the Blacksmith’. Uncle Theo used to sing it for Greg when he was younger, when his mother and father took him to see Theo in his cottage on New Kelso. Those visits came back to him as one voice led each verse with everyone else bellowing along for the chorus. The song told the tale of Regin, a blacksmith and swordmaker, who helped the hero Siegfried to slay the dragon Fafnir but who then planned to kill Siegfried; the hero disco
vered this and dealt with the blacksmith in a direct and final manner.

  The gallery was busy to the point of standing room only. While the Firmanovs made for the bar, Greg and Kao Chih had held back, with Kao Chih’s face below the eyes covered with a plaid scarf and the brim of his cap dipped over his brow. In the meantime, Greg took in the surrounding press, surreptitiously studying faces and heads, looking for someone who might be Vashutkin’s go-between. ‘Regin the Blacksmith’ was nearly finished, with scores of Dariens, male and female, roaring out the chorus, led by a broad-shouldered, black-haired man in a short-sleeved leather jerkin who banged an empty tankard on the table in time with the beat. Alexei reappeared with two bowls of savoury meat and vegetables which Greg and Kao Chih accepted gratefully and began to devour.

  ‘So what does this messenger look like?’

  Greg shrugged. ‘The message said that the go-between and his bodyguard would be here today and tomorrow between sunup and midnight.’ He paused to chew another mouthful. ‘So we’re … looking for at least two people. Dinna have a clue about them otherwise.’

  Nikolai frowned a moment, then smiled. ‘I have it – we just wait and see who stays around later then go and say hello.’

  ‘I think it’s more straightforward than that,’ Greg said, staring past him. The main table had finished singing and the brawny, black-haired man was muttering with a grey-haired woman in hunter’s garb. As they conversed, she glanced across the busy room directly at Greg and the big man looked round too, revealing the face of Vashutkin’s go-between.

  It was Vashutkin himself.

  ‘Is that … ?’ Alexei said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Huh. Hardly recognised him without moustache.’

  Then Nikolai appeared next to Vashutkin and his companion, exchanged a few words then looked up at Greg and Alexei and indicated the exit. They nodded and made for the door, Greg hurriedly wolfing down the rest of his food, then a moment later Vashutkin came out, smiled tightly and without a word beckoned them to follow. Minutes later they were descending a curve of rough-cut stone steps to a long, low storeroom lined with barrels and crates and lit by a few oil lamps. A tall man with a ponytail and a long coat got up from a crude trestle table and muttered something in Vashutkin’s ear before shaking his hand and heading for the exit.