Foreign Devils

by John Hornor Jacobs

  ‘You got the Quotidian. You could write her,’ I said.

  ‘Kalends and Ides,’ he responded, and fell silent again. That was all I could get from him.

  Back on horseback, well watered and fed, we pushed past the hardscrabble plains and into the shoal grasses of the Big Rill watershed quickly, and soon had game enough for meat and wood enough for roasting.

  He took it out that night from its lavish box and turned it over in his hands. It caught the light of the fire and shimmered along its intaglios of silver warding. A soft glow came from it. A daemon churned and fretted inside it, slavering for blood.

  ‘We’ll make for New Damnation, see what Marcellus knows about Beleth,’ Fisk said.

  ‘Would he be keeping tabs on the engineer? Seems a small job for a general.’

  ‘He won’t, but his spymaster would. And Cornelius has made this a priority.’ He spat into the fire and sat there thinking. ‘Beleth’s an important piece on the Knightboard, that’s for damn sure.’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember, since we were hauling you back, but I think we saw him fleeing the Cornelian when—’

  ‘The vaettir and the Crimson Man, right?’

  ‘That’s right. He was trucking north and west. And we were north of here.’

  ‘So, heading to Passasuego, then. Or Hot Springs.’

  ‘Hot Springs is doubtful, since there ain’t much left of it after that infernal shit burnt it down,’ I said.

  He nodded, silent for a while. The coyotes yipped and screeched in the distance. With our fire, they wouldn’t get close. He turned the Quotidian over in his hands.

  ‘Always something, isn’t it?’ he said, glancing at me where I was mending a shirt. ‘If it’s not some damned thing hanging around my neck, it’s one lusting for my blood.’

  I patted the Hellfire pistol I now carried, given to me by Secundus himself. A nice piece with a gunbelt full of ammunition. While the legion will defray some of the cost of getting Imp rounds replaced by an engineer, it won’t cover all of it, and so, when my gunbelt ran empty, it was empty for good. Unless I stumbled upon a silverlode.

  ‘Or these pieces of damnation,’ I said.

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Damnation. That when we die we’ll go to the same Hell these infernal creatures come from?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Then what do you believe?’

  ‘Most folks carry Hell with them.’

  ‘I don’t even know what that means,’ he said.

  I stilled in my darning. Looked at Fisk close. ‘We get to where we are by the choices we make. Everybody’s the same in that, right?’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ he said.

  ‘Then it stands to reason, if you’re in your own little Hell, it’s one of your own making.’

  He looked at me, grinding his teeth. It was not me he was mad at, I knew this. But he was angry all the same. ‘Innocents die, Shoe. Children. Those settlers we came upon before all this—’ He waved his hand to indicate the night. ‘They didn’t get dead by poor choices.’

  ‘Didn’t they?’

  ‘So, is there some Hell waiting for us?’

  ‘No. Way I understand it is the “Hell” these things come from is just some—’ I thought a moment, trying to remember what Samantha had told me as we climbed to the caldera in the Whites to find the Medieran lass. Or what was left of her. ‘Other place. And these things have found their way here, summoned. Crawled through some breach between worlds.’

  ‘But with every shot, I feel it. The despair. I feel dirtied. Marked with soot.’ He held the Quotidian in his big, calloused hands and looked into it as if trying to divine some answer.

  ‘Don’t know, really, why that is, partner,’ I said in a soft voice. ‘They are devils and possibly full of evil. Or maybe they just are, like fire. I just don’t think they have any claim upon our souls.’

  He remained quiet for a long while and then placed the strange device back in its box.

  ‘You see him?’ I asked, casting a glance over my shoulder. We were heading south, now, toward New Damnation, following the curve of the river. It was still rocky here, near the Big Rill, and we were on the eastern shore, away from the Whites. On the whole, the stretchers tended to stay on the western shore. But there’s no reckoning stretchers.

  Fisk gave the barest inclination of his head and said, ‘Our little stretcher shadow.’

  ‘Not much little about him,’ I said. ‘He’s fast and knows how to stay out of sight.’

  ‘Why don’t we lead him on a snipe hunt, then, one whose ending he might not like.’ He looked about. ‘We’re maybe three miles shy of that brambled gulley we camped in two years ago during the blizzard. Remember?’

  I nodded. ‘You thinking ambush?’

  ‘Yep.’ Now we were away from the Cornelians and back on the trail, the formality in his speech fell away, leaving the Fisk I knew of old. But it was disconcerting that he was so mutable. ‘There’s that offshoot of the gulley where we kept the horses. Almost grown over. You make your way up and out, I’ll duck in there and wait until he passes.’

  ‘That sounds like a plan.’

  ‘You don’t sound too keen on it.’

  ‘Tight spaces. Stretchers. Not my favourite things in the world, that’s for damn sure.’

  He looked at me. At this point, most men would make some crack about my size, my heritage, indigenous as I am. I might run from it, but unlike the Rumans, I am of this place. Just like the stretchers.

  Fisk remained quiet for a bit. Then, he said, as if considering it, ‘You not up for it, pard?’

  ‘No, Ia dammit. I am game.’ Something in me twisted. I wasn’t for it and calling on Ia – even though it was my own mouth that uttered the words – felt wrong. But we have old habits. My mouth remembers the words of faith when my heart doesn’t. I touched the grips of the Hellfire six guns and Bess chuffed her head and snorted her derision. It still felt wrong, the guns, but we live in a fallen world.

  We rode hard for an hour, and Bess’ flanks foamed when we drew near the gulley and entered. When we reached the offshoot, where we’d kept the horses that week we were snowed in, Bess began to nose her way back to her old spot, among the bramblewrack and brush, where she’d huddle against the cold, but I tugged her away.

  Fisk dismounted, pulled his carbine, and levered one into the warded chamber. He swung the carbine into the crook of his arm and then thumbed the six-guns and the Hellfire cartridges on his belt. He tossed his horse’s reins to me and I snatched them out of the air before the black could get up to any mischief.

  ‘Lead ’em up and out. He’ll be on our trail, close. When he passes …’

  He left it unsaid. Boom. No more stretcher.

  I nodded. We’d worked this sort of ambush before on the vaettir, to various results. The thing about vaettir, they are old, and know all the wiles of man. Like dvergar. We are kin, of a sort. Both natives of this big, fierce land.

  I led the horses up and through the gulley. Fisk backed into the offshoot, rifle held loosely in his big, raw-boned hands.

  The sides pressed in, as we made our way through, and bramblewrack scratched at the sky, and snagged on Bess and the black’s flanks.

  Everything hushed. My heart continued to beat, and I could feel the surge of the sanguine stuff through my body with each pump of that desperate muscle.

  Stillness except for the movement of horses. Silence except for the falling of hooves.

  Then I was up and out of the gulley. No gunfire. The land opened up around us, no trees, just shoal grass, bramble, and wrack and ruin. The sky, unbroken and vast. The wind, cold though the sun beat down.

  And vaettir. He was standing there, a hundred feet away, grinning, a sword held in his clawed hand, long hair whipping in the wind. A legionnaire’s gladius, by the looks of it. Our ambush was his ambush. There was a moment’s shock of recognition – a moment it seemed he’d waited for – and
then he raced forward.

  Bess whipped around, despite my startled yell, putting her haunches between us and the oncoming vaettir. I fumbled for my six-guns. I tugged at them, desperate, the back of my neck itching, already feeling the impending blow from the stretcher’s sword. I toppled sideways, out of the saddle, onto the hard-baked earth, guns in hand, rolling onto my back.

  There was a high-pitched screech and a shadow like a carrion fowl filled the sky and descended. The vaettir.

  Bess hawed and kicked out, wheeling and bucking. But too slow. The stretcher was on top of us. He raised his sword.

  From my left, a blur crossed my vision. Another fierce bird, another screech.

  The stretcher fell away, howling. Bess hawed and kicked in a cacophonous ruckus. Pushing myself up on my elbows, through the hardscrabble dust I saw two figures rolling and tearing each other with clawed hands and sharp teeth.

  Another stretcher.

  They wailed and thrashed about almost too fast to see. And then they parted, hissing, like scrapping cats. The first vaettir rose, hands outstretched but empty. The other lashed forward and there was a glint of light on metal. The first stretcher’s head fell away with a gout of blood. He toppled and pumped his life into the dirt.

  This new stretcher stood tall and was dressed in mouldering garment and furs, but with a look I’d never seen on a vaettir face. A series of expressions chased on another across his features – first relief, then outrage, then sadness. He turned to me, red blade held loosely.

  Both pistols raised and centred on its chest, I said in dvergar, ‘I slew your kin, not so long ago. I will kill you.’

  The massive creature – a big bull elf – cocked his head, slowly, as if he were remembering. Raising one dirty, clawed hand, he touched his chest.

  ‘Gynth?’ it said, the sound thick and oddly pronounced through the forest of teeth in its mouth. Its voice was deep, very deep, yet clear as a massive bell tolling on the heights. ‘Gynth’ is the dvergar word for ‘kindred’ or ‘kin’ but can also mean ‘brother’ or even ‘blood.’ My native tongue has layers upon layers of meaning.

  ‘Pierced through the brain,’ I said. There is no shame in admitting fear and I can admit that I was terribly afraid. But I forced myself to take three steps toward the vaettir, both Hellfire pistols levelled on its chest. I would plug him before he took me, all the old gods and new as my witness.

  Then the elf did a strange thing. It shook its head, looking puzzled. It acted as if it had been awoken from some long, all-consuming dream. I looked at its clothing again. Maybe it was a shroud and the thing had been buried – though all the whys and hows of that question quickly swarmed and clamoured for my attention. I brushed away the distraction. Being distracted near a stretcher is a quick visit to the undertaker.

  The vaettir raised its hand and extended a long, clawed finger at me and repeated, ‘Gynth. Yan gynth.’

  We are kin. We are blood.

  The vaettir looked at his gore-streaked hand holding the sword as if he’d found a serpent there. He dropped the blade, held his hands up to me in what seemed like supplication.

  A moment passed between us, our gazes locked, and the vaettir nodded to me almost imperceptibly.

  A clatter of loose rock was the only thing that alerted him. He leapt into the air and dashed away – as fast as only vaettir can – as Fisk came out of the gulley, his face a storm cloud and gripping his carbine tight.

  He approached where I stood, looking down at the headless body of the stretcher that trailed us.

  ‘What in Ia’s name happened here?’ he said. ‘You do this?’ He nudged the gladius with his foot.

  ‘You’re not gonna believe this, partner.’

  When I had told Fisk what happened, he remained silent for a long while. Finally, he said, ‘Bullshit,’ and huddled into himself, becoming smaller. Something in him calcified. He would rather think me a liar or a fool than countenance a vaettir not a villain.

  ‘So, I chopped off the stretchers head with a sword I pulled from the air?’ I said, nudging the gladius with my foot.

  ‘Bears fight other bears. The mountain lion will eat another lion’s cubs,’ Fisk said, as if that finished it.

  I opened my mouth to retort, to describe the vaettir’s face after the altercation. But seeing Fisk’s expression I stopped. It would be wasted breath.

  We collected the body, the sword, and rode on.

  FIVE

  6 Ides, Quintilius, 2638 ex Ruma Immortalis

  The citizens of New Damnation feared fire.

  It was a city that grew around the fifth’s garrison in a mad jumble of wooden buildings; engineer college and munitions, a river harbour and port, slaver’s wharf and auctions, millers and dyers, crossroad colleges, bathhouses, barbers, artisans, boatwrights and fishermen, printmakers and engravers, whorehouses and saloons, and one great aqueduct lancing down like an arrow from the springs in the foothills of the Whites. New Damnation’s air was filled with the noise and spice of industry: the bustle of tradesmen and the dusky slave-teams chanting work hollers as they pulled sledges through packed-dirt streets, the constant banging of hammers on wood as carpenters built arrogant houses for merchant kings, equites rising, the steaming tenements and insulae near the river teeming with street vendors, the scents of their foreign foods and fragrant worship of obscure gods filling the air, the stink of sewage spilling into the Big Rill along with the chaff of millers and the dross of the smelting forges, the drunken laughter of theatre-goers and the chants and incense of the pious visiting the temples to Ia and the older gods.

  Of course, it wasn’t named New Damnation to begin with. Its original name was Novo Dacia – founded by Hellenes – but that was a century ago, before the Ruman occupation and then outright ownership of the territories. A wooden town, built from gambel and pine timbers harvested from the skirts of the White Mountains. A tinderbox.

  One poorly drawn ward, one ill-guarded lantern and New Damnation would live up to its name, blossoming into inferno.

  We crossed the Big Rill upstream at the Miller’s Crook ferry and reached the town on 6 Ides, and the whole place was in a tizzy. Vigiles patrolled the streets, wary and watchful – never straying too far from fountains or water wagons. The lanes were full of pistoleros loitering on the planks in front of stores, shops, and the larger homes while the legionaries kept to the campus martius and, mostly, inside its walls.

  I picked up a copy of the Cornicen as we rode into town from a newsie-lad for a copper denarius. The headline read Harbour Town On War Footing – All Able Bodied Men Needed. When I showed it to Fisk he shrugged, as if he expected it.

  We made our way through the streets, avoiding the homeless wanton-boys, the slave workers bearing palanquins over the muddy streets, past the shit-slicks and refuse piles near insulae, up the hill to the better appointed neighbourhoods with paved streets lined with white, soft, quarried stone until we came to the campus martius plateau, and showed our papers to the legionnaires posted at the gates. The dead vaettir on the back of Fisk’s horse drew attention, causing a small commotion, and we led a processional to the stables, where my partner tasked the saucer-eyed stable boys to guard the body until he could figure out some way to dispense with it.

  What was once a camp of the Ruman army on the march had, over time, become a permanent encampment. Timber walls were replaced with stone, tents with housing and barracks. The command tent was now a three-storied office complex, adorned with daemon-light fixtures allowing worklight at all times. Yet all of the buildings were still plain, devoid of all but the barest adornments. Simple functional buildings crafted of stone harvested from the Whites and brought here on the backs of countless slaves – most of those dvergar, but also Numidian, Aegyptian, and wherever else they came from. But above the command centre a great flag pole stood flying the emblems of V Occidentalia. There was a fifth back in Latinum, but the emperor Ingenuus saw fit to reset the legion counter, as it were, with the discovery of the Imperial Pr
otectorate and the Hardscrabble Territories. The fact that this fifth was the second fifth caused some consternation when officers who had served with the Latinum V Prima were assigned. The Prima galled them, over here.

  But it didn’t keep them from being proud. The brag-rags whipped in the fresh wind coming down from the Whites and showed holly and silver, cannon and ships, and a curious flame emblem I could only take to mean Hellfire.

  We stabled our mounts and made our way to the command.

  If there’s one thing that Rumans love above all else, it’s bureaucracy. It was hard to tell the difference between secretaries and slaves here – everyone ran about clutching papers and wax styluses. But Fisk fixed the pilum-bearing eagle pin to his shirt – showing his rank as legate – and snagged a page by the elbow.

  ‘Take me to Marcellus,’ he said.

  The boy – no more than sixteen – looked frightened. ‘Can’t, sir. He’s in Harbour Town. Some of his legates have remained here, and so has the camp prefect.’

  ‘Take me to the prefect, then.’

  The boy led us through a warren of offices and hallways, neatly lit by daemonlight fixtures, until we came to a large room centred around a three-dimensional map of the Imperial Protectorate and Hardscrabble Territories. Many officers and messengers spoke quickly and quietly, prim and officious and efficient. The air smelled of tallow and blood and ink and on a far wall there were six or seven tremendously large slaves – each wearing a torc around his neck – attending Quotidians that hissed and scratched their messages on parchment and were then snatched up by waiting legates.

  ‘I’ll be damned,’ I said, looking at the slave-manned Quotidians. ‘That’s a blood-thirsty bit of work, there, Fisk.’

  He squinted, eyeing the slaves. ‘Those hosses seem like they got enough, though, don’t they?’