by Helen Allan
“I fear many of these ‘beings with thoughts and feelings’ are going to die tonight, Sorrow. Perhaps it would be best if you rest in the pod until this is over.”
“No,” she sighed, undoing the safety catch on the small, silver gun he had handed her, “I’m not afraid to kill, Etienne, I know that until these tribes learn the truth about their planet and their genetics, it is kill or be killed. I don’t want to risk the lives of our friends inside the keep over any sensibilities or hopes for the future.”
“Wise, as usual,” Etienne smiled, “but Sorrow, ma cherie, I came on this journey with you to protect you and,” he held up his hand to forestall her argument, “and I must insist you go back to the pod until you have fully recovered from your ordeal in the Capital.” He cast a meaning look at her legs as he said this.
Sorrow looked down and gasped, tears immediately springing to her eyes. The bleeding had begun again, her tracksuit pants showing a slow spread of red. Blushing she nodded and turned to go, just as a scream echoed from further down the wall and one of the men tumbled forwards and down into the waiting Sin enemy, a spear impaling him.
Ignoring the spears and arrows of retribution from the humans that rained down upon them, the Sin surged forward and began consuming the man where he squirmed, pinioned to the ground by the spear.
“Kebab anyone?” Etienne muttered, grimacing in horror. He shook his head in disgust before pressing the trigger and mowing down the Sin eating the man and all those who came after him.
Sorrow, seeing that the machine gun was something unknown to the Sin, heard the cheers from the humans and watched for a few minutes as the enemy continued to run forward, dying row upon row, piling on top of each other in a mass of black leather and giant limbs. Sheathing her weapon, she turned and, swallowing bile, walked down the stairs and across the muddy Keep, to the pod.
Once inside she drew up the door ramp, shutting out all the noise from outside. Pressing the sleeping nook buttons, she waited as the pod’s interior changed from flight mode to sleep mode. Sobbing, she took two more painkillers, wadded a towel between her legs, curled up in a ball on the bed and waited for sleep to take her.
5
Sorrow frowned as she looked down at the plans Etienne had drawn.
Building work to expand the fortress walls and construct proper shelter for its people was progressing, but it needed to go much faster if they were to beat the weather. This planet seemed to have two seasons, wet winter and snowy winter – and there was nothing in between.
There was also the matter of hiding the spacepod that she and Etienne had stolen from the capital. She had been sleeping in the pod since they had arrived and regularly talking to her mother, updating her on the hours and hours of memories she had received in the regeneration tank and considering how they fit into her mother’s and the other Immortals’ knowledge of the Alien Gods’ plans for Earth. Sorrow was making the most of her time with the pod technology because she knew it was only a matter of time before the craft would be traced and her interplanetary link to her mother would be broken.
Etienne had taken up residence in the fortress but was reluctant to agree to Sorrow’s plan to dispose of the spacepod - it was his suggestion they hide it. Sorrow wasn’t convinced; she knew her husband would be regenerated by now, and given how they parted, she knew it was unlikely he would not search for her. In fact, given his penchant for The Hunt, she had a sick feeling that she would become his newest prey.
Rolling up the drawings, she held them in her hand and paced the footprint for her new building.
Joella and Newto had agreed that the entire fortress needed rethinking. The plan was to build a new wall, about 1km in circumference around the Keep, to create a bailey that people could build houses in and defend from Sin attack. The new houses would be made of rammed earth or rock, not timber, to deter fire. This would also help prevent the cold wreaking havoc on the young and elderly and stall the rampant disease that was slowly making its way through the ramshackle shanty town cramming the Keep.
The original fortress would be expanded to castle-like capacity, incorporating the current Keep walls. New Keep walls would be built around the castle, creating a larger, defendable space. Etienne’s drawings also included the eventual construction of curtain walls, making a double thick layer of protection. Being French, an artist, and susceptible to flamboyancy, he had reluctantly reined in his drawings to more basic, achievable designs, accepting that labour was short and technology virtually non-existent. His pretty gargoyle drawings and fluted column designs had given the local children something attractive to marvel over, but that was where they ended.
Since the attack that had been thwarted with Etienne’s machine gun, and the subsequent town meeting, building had been progressing each day, but slowly. The Sin still attacked every third or fourth night, but the new weaponry on the human’s side in the form of the French man and his arsenal had given the people some courage. In all about 60 people, including Sorrow and Etienne, spent every hour of the day carting mud from the nearby creek and building the walls. They retreated at night to the safety of the fortress.
Initially, the townsfolk had wanted to use timber to build a palisade wall of wood, but Sorrow had managed to convince them that while earth would take longer, it would be impenetrable when compete. Timber could simply be burnt. Later there had been a suggestion from some of the human farmers that stone could be quarried to make the building process hasten – but the sites for possible quarries were near the mountains, which was not only surrounded by dense forest but many tribes of Sin.
Consequently, the building progressed using the mud formwork Megan had used to construct the original fortress. Although progress was slow, a wall already extended three hundred metres long and ten metres high down one side of their future town, the trees felled 30m each side to allow for good sight-lines for defence. The timber was stacked inside the town boundary, ready to be used for the future construction of doors, roof trusses and furniture.
Children too small to help with the building were helping in other ways, collecting twigs from the fallen trees and creating piles ready for cooking fires, collecting small stones for later road construction, and helping their mothers in a myriad of other ways.
Inside the Keep walls, the work was also progressing on sanitation for those living there until their new homes could be built, and on expanding the fortress into a castle. Pits and rock-lined channels had been built to run waste under the walls and down the hill to the stream below. New wells had been dug, rules put in place.
Sorrow knew many of the humans feared her. She looked like them, yet she didn’t. She also knew they resented her for taking control of the development of the fortress. But Etienne had done a great deal to smooth the waters, eating with the families, discussing all that Sorrow had experienced and all that she and her mother had hoped to accomplish. His charm and Sorrow’s reputation as a doctor had gradually brought around many of those who had initially resisted her. Although there was still an undercurrent of mistrust among a core group, many now regarded her as part of Newto’s family and Etienne as one of them, a slave, a refugee from the plains.
Now, as she walked and inspected the castle that would house her, Etienne and Newto’s family, Sorrow heard her name called and looked up, smiling at Jess, Joella and Newto’s seventeen-year-old daughter. The girl had been spending a great deal of time with Sorrow since her arrival and had been invaluable as a nurse and assistant.
“Beautiful,” Sorrow said smiling and taking the proffered flowers from the young woman. “I don’t recognise these from around this part of the forest. Where do they come from?”
Jess shrugged. “Not far,” she said shyly.
Sorrow noticed the girl had pushed her hair artfully up one side of her neck, hiding the skin. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a love bite.’
“So Jess, what do you think of the plan for the town?” Sorrow asked, squatting, unfolding her map again
and spreading it out on the ground, keen to find out a little more about the shy young woman.
“Uh, I think it’s, uh, good,” the girl said, shrugging, “but I’d leave maybe some trees in one section, not clear it all for houses and roads because, you know, the trees are really important to, to some people.”
Sorrow cocked her head and looked at Jess, who didn’t raise her eyes from the map.
“And how is Hannibal?” she asked quietly.
The girl drew in a sharp breath; her face paling as she looked at Sorrow.
“How did you know?” she whispered, her eyes darting left and right to ensure no one could overhear their conversation.
Sorrow laughed.
“I didn’t. But now you have confirmed what I suspected.”
Jess blushed.
“Don’t worry,” Sorrow said, still laughing, “I won’t tell anyone. Mum told me that you and he were friends when you were smaller. When you kept darting off into the woods, despite the fears of everyone else, I knew you must be meeting someone or going somewhere you felt safe.”
“We want to be together,” Jess said, tearfully, “my parents hate the Sin. They told Han he was not welcome here. But he’s not a creature; he’s not like the normal Sin. He and his father’s tribe, they don’t eat people anymore.”
Sorrow nodded, thinking.
“So, how are they?” she asked, remembering the last time she had seen Hannibal’s village when the Earthborn had wiped them out - her husband had left no one alive, not even the children. Han had only survived because he was hiding in the woods with the elders of the tribe, who had just returned from their trip to the mountains with Megan.
“They live a short distance from here,” Jess said, “but they don’t stay in any one place long. There are not many in Han’s tribe anymore, and the tribes all fight. Han has been teaching me how to use swords, the same way Megan and his father taught him.”
“Has he?” Sorrow mused. “I wonder, you know Jess, the next time you visit, can you let Han’s father know that I would like to meet him.”
“Uh, I’ll try,” the girl said, sounding dubious. “But I’m a human Sorrow, I mean, I don’t want to sound, um, mean, but you are Earthborn. They don’t exactly have a very good view of your kind. Since you, uh, you know, killed everyone in their village.”
Sorrow sighed and, once again folding up her plans, stood.
“Yes,” she said, “I understand. I’ll need to think on this a bit more. Thanks for your honesty, Jess.”
“You won’t, uh, you won’t.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Sorrow reassured the girl before heading back to the fortress.
A plan had begun to formulate in her mind. She needed to find Etienne.
6
“No. You know I don’t agree. What if we need to go somewhere, ma mie,” Etienne argued, “if these walls are breached? What if we need to contact your mother?”
Sorrow sighed.
“That’s just it. This ship can be traced. Any calls we make can be monitored. My husband will be coming looking for me any day. I don’t want him to have any way of finding us, me.”
Etienne paced up and down the newly constructed castle hall. The building was coming along, door by door. Already he and Sorrow, Joella and Newto, had moved into their chambers on the top storey; the warmest part of the building and the rooms that afforded the best views of the expanding township. Below stairs, more than one town meeting had been called in the hall. This room alone was big enough to serve as a hospital or shelter for most of the town if need be. Some of the humans working on the town wall had begrudged work on the castle, but others knew the value of having a strong Keep as a last resort should the main walls one day be breached. The children, also, were benefiting from the large hall with it being used as a crèche and school room combined several days of the week.
The work on the town walls progressed, but Sorrow thought it likely it would take several years, at this rate, to complete them. Consequently, she had ordered labour redirected to completion of the castle and construction of four three-storey mud-walled apartments to house some of the families with babies this winter. The apartments would replace the crude timber buildings previously put up higgledy-piggledy inside the old Keep walls. But there would not be enough buildings to house all the population – an issue she was still working to resolve.
Already the health of the children had improved through some small changes. Stone had been used to create paths and small roads throughout the area being enclosed by the wall, reducing the amount of mud and animal filth people trod in and lived amongst. Communal food preparation areas had been set up with new hygiene rules; a new well had been dug to ensure fresh, clean water was available to all. But so much more needed to be done. The people living inside the enclosure were broken, scared, and reduced to living like peasants, although, Sorrow knew that some, like Tansy, were modern humans transported less than a decade or two ago from Earth. Still others were generational slaves, born and bred on this colonised planet. All, through lack of knowledge, or lack of willpower, needed guidance, leadership and a direction forward. The fact that she was an Earthborn, and forcing changes, was a constant source of bitterness to some of the humans but accepted naturally by others. Meetings to forestall disquiet and dissent were becoming more regular as winter neared and building slowed.
Right now, though, Sorrow’s focus was on getting rid of the spacepod, and Etienne was wholeheartedly against the idea.
“But if your husband can trace the calls he will trace the last conversation with your mother, where you tell her you are heading to the fortress.”
“Yes,” Sorrow sighed. “but when he gets here, I won’t be here. It will just be humans protecting themselves from the Sin, and there will be no trace of me because the pod won’t be here either.”
Etienne sighed and took a deep breath.
“And where? Where may I ask, are we going to hide?”
“You are not going anywhere,” Sorrow said firmly, “you need to stay and see that my plans are followed through to fruition. I will be making my way to the forest, to form an alliance.”
“An alliance with whom? Or what?” Etienne frowned.
“Never you mind,” Sorrow smiled at her friend, “but Etienne, I have another plan that I can share with you, that I entrust to you actually, and I really hope you can follow through with it.”
“Really?” the Frenchman asked, grinning, his interest piqued, “does it involve women?”
“No,” Sorrow laughed, “and it doesn’t involve men either, at least not the sort you are familiar with.”
Etienne raised his eyebrows and sighed.
“I’m not going to like this am I?”
“Mum, for God’s sake,” Sorrow said, shaking her head incredulously at the screen.
“Excuse the pun,” Megan laughed.
“It’s not a laughing matter, it was hard enough to kill the bitch the first time around. Now you want to bring her back?”
Megan nodded.
Sorrow threw up her hands in exasperation. She had called her mother this afternoon, the last call before she sent the ship back via autopilot to the Capital, to update her on how she planned to proceed – and her mum had revealed what she and the other Immortal Chortles proposed to do. An argument had naturally ensued.
“I’m not going to set her free or let her live for long,” Megan intoned, “I just want her to tell me more of the history of the Gods than what you have found out in the tank, anything that might help us fight Seth.”
Sorrow shook her head.
“If you let her out of that regeneration tank…”
“We won’t,” Ceda, her mother’s lover, said as he put his arms around her and peered into the camera at Sorrow, “we will have her bound tightly. She will answer our questions, and then I will happily decapitate her again.”
Sorrow chewed her lip and thought through all the things that could go wrong by putting Amaunet, Amun’s wife, bac
k together for even the shortest of times. Killing the pair had been the hardest thing any of them had done – and the best thing to happen to humanity in thousands of years.
Megan smiled reassuringly. “Honey, we need to know their history, these fucking aliens must have a weak spot. I kept her head for a reason. I knew one day we might need her knowledge and it looks like that day has come.”
Sorrow sighed. “Mum you know their history, I told you everything I’d learned in the regeneration tank.”
“We know bits and pieces, vignettes really,” Megan frowned, but in between thousands of years went by, there must be more – particularly about Seth. For some reason, there was very little about him in any of the stories you told me. Only passing thoughts and actions remembered by other Gods.”
“OK, Mum, find out what you can. I need to go now. You won’t hear from me until next February when I run through the portal. I’ve got to send the pod back before Anhur can find me.”
Megan shook her head. “Honey keep the pod. Fly it up to the mountains and park it somewhere he can’t find it. The caves would surely interfere with his tracking devices. Some of those I visited with Khalili are big enough to house a semi-trailer, they will easily hide the little ship.”
“But,” Sorrow started.
“No buts,” Megan said frowning, “there might come a time when you need that technology. When the portal opens, you can fly straight down and jump directly through. Don’t be too keen to live in the stone age – I’ve done it, remember? I would have given my right arm to have had access to the technology inside that pod when I was rubbing two sticks together trying to make fire. What does Etienne think?”
“He agrees we should keep it,” Sorrow grimaced.
“How is he?” Megan asked, smiling.
“Well, he didn’t get the sex-fest he was hoping for when he agreed to come to this planet, that’s for sure,” Sorrow said ruefully, “but he’s the best friend I’ve got Mum, he’s great.”