The five horses were picked out from the dozen or so in the stables behind the house, and looked as well fed as the plump couple. Gabel led the beasts out to the front of the house, where Rowan was playing with the scrawny children. She looked up and was visibly relieved to see their new transport.
‘They seem nice.’
‘They’re friendly enough,’ said Gabel. ‘I don’t know how good they might be in a chase, but hopefully we won’t need to find out.’
Rowan smiled as she patted the closest of the animals, running her fingers through its dark, braided mane and feeling its neck muscles move under the thick hide.
‘Come along,’ said the magus. ‘We need to make up for lost time.’
‘What’s so urgent?’
‘Time doesn’t wait for tardy travellers,’ he replied simply, and led his chosen animal back toward the trail.
They said a final goodbye to the family, along with a word of appreciation, and set off once more on the road to Iilyani.
On the way Gabel interrogated the magus, demanding more details on the mission. In Goya he had attended confession with the priest, although he didn’t tell the others that. The priest had recommended a policy of honesty, and suggested that the best way to get answers was to ask questions. Whenever Gabel asked the magus for specifics he hadn’t received even an allusion as to their real destination, nor their objective. All he would reveal was that it would be a few months until they arrived in Hermeticia. Gabel now believed this to be their final destination, and it meant that he could plot a proper course for their journey; onwards to Iilyani, through the Resting Place, over the deadly Sinh-ha Plains and through the rainforest to the crater ridge, below which would be the city of xenophobes, Shianti – Hermeticia.
The horses moved placidly along the trail toward the junction that offered the choice of Goya, Iilyani or Ponta Pora. The party continued on their way west, with the horses moving in single file, ending with the magus who had the privilege of keeping an eye on the baggage horse.
Moving hastily without rest was their defence against the goyles that lived in the forest that side of the lake. When they rested they did so without fire. They slept with metres between them, and without blankets even in the cold nights. Gabel protested at being so far away from the young woman he was supposed to protect, until Caeles sharply pointed out that he would be able to do little to protect Rowan if the camp was swarmed because of their collective body heat. Goyles were drawn to even a mild rise in temperature. The hunter accepted this, saying that he would concede despite his concerns.
A least a fortnight from Iilyani, a tired Joseph Gabel stopped his steed in its tracks and raised his chin, frozen like a sculpture until the others turned and rejoined him.
‘We’ve got to keep moving,’ Caeles said, keeping a close rein on his animal to decrease its fussing. ‘Stop messing around.’
‘I can hear it again.’
‘Hear what?’ asked the magus.
‘Quiet!’ he snapped. ‘He’s following us again. Caeles, come here. Listen.’
‘I don’t hear anything but the goyles.’
‘Shut up and listen,’ Gabel said.
‘…I heard it.’
‘It’s him.’
‘The errant in the ninja suit,’ said Caeles, already preparing his horse for movement. ‘I almost forgot about that son of a bitch.’
‘I thought that if he were to maintain his pursuit, the detour around the Lual would have slowed him at least a little.’
‘Well, there’s no point in waiting for him to attack us again. Come on!’
They pushed the hoses harder whilst the hunter listened out for the pursuer. He remembered the rasp of his metallic voice, but more vividly than that the cold lick of the blade through his flesh.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Rowan asked. She trotted beside him, with her arms resting on the lip of the saddle as her fingers loosely grasped the reins. Her animal was the most placid of the five, and blew its lips as it walked.
‘If the person that’s following us really is that Scathac, then he must be taking out the goyles in the trees as he goes. Or else they see him as friendly.’
‘Is that possible?’ she asked. ‘The doctor told me that goyles were stupid creatures, like moths.’
‘So I’m told.’
‘What did this stranger look like?’
‘I recall he was very thin, with wiry muscles and dressed in black. He had a facebelt over his eyes.’
‘Then how does he see?’
‘I don’t know. This journey is opening my own eyes as to how little I know. Back in Niu Correntia, I thought I could handle everything. But this … I’ve never journeyed past São Jantuo-on-Lual before. I know now there are so many things that I cannot fight. That I cannot protect you from.’
‘You don’t need to protect me,’ she said, and he thought he could hear a touch of offense in her voice. ‘I survived this far.’
Barely, he thought but didn’t say.
Another few days’ travel brought them to a clearing large enough to build a fire. It was far enough away from the trees for the heat-sensitive goyles to dare to attack them, and the party was sick of freezing, sleepless nights. Caeles and the magus went to fetch wood, while the hunter stayed with Rowan to build a fire.
‘Won’t those creatures come?’ she asked him.
‘There are already scorch marks here,’ he said, pointing to the charred circle by their feet. ‘Someone else built a fire, and there are no bones. That means they survived, whoever they were.’
She looked down at her dusty boots and the tiny stones, scuffmarks and dead leaves that littered the clearing.
‘Good for them,’ she murmured.
~
Caeles picked his way through the trees, rubbing the sandpaper bark of their heavy trunks as if feeling for the first time. The magus wandered close by, breaking twigs from the drier branches.
‘I think it’s about time we talked about what we’re really doing out here,’ Caeles said.
The magus rearranged his bundle of kindling in his arms, carrying it all like a baby made of sticks. ‘Really?’ he asked, not turning around.
‘We must have some sort of real objective. Just saying that Gabel and I have to protect each other is bullshit. There’s more to it; there always is. What’s his objective? And what happens to me when he’s carried it out?’
‘Do you really want to know that?’
‘Look,’ said the cyborg, sighing. He’d plucked a few green leaves from the trees and was rubbing them together between his fingers. ‘First of all, stop with all the obscurity. Who are you, “magus”? You’re an errant, aren’t you?’
‘Well, of course,’ he replied, turning and flashing him a dark-lipped smile. ‘What else could I be?’
‘Then you’re a damn special one, if you are. I know that errants were genetically designed, I suppose you could say—’
‘Stop,’ said the magus. ‘Caeles, what you think you know about errants isn’t the whole truth.’
‘I know that they’re all long-lived. I know that most of them have skills that are enhancements of natural human abilities.’
‘Skills,’ the magus chuckled. ‘There were a lot of errants who felt that they were cursed. Your friend Jason Dyson of São Jantuo is one of those people.’
‘How do you feel?’
‘Not all of my “skills” came with being an errant. I learned many of them. And you are asking all the wrong questions, Caeles. Ask me what our mission entails.’
‘All right. What does our mission entail?’
‘You’ll find out soon,’ said the magus, and began to walk away.
Caeles groaned. He looked down at his fingers: he’d turned the leaves to watery green mush on his fingertips. He wiped his hands on his trousers.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Listen up. You’ve come to me before I even joined this group, telling me to be ready. Like some damn ghost. So what’s the point, unless I have
some important part to play? Something to add here?’
‘You’re doing all right,’ replied the magus. ‘Keep going.’
‘It’s someone I know, isn’t it?’ Caeles asked. ‘Someone I’ve met before.’
The magus looked at him again, and nodded slowly.
‘You know the name,’ he said.
~
The hunter become increasingly frustrated with the dwindling fire. Rowan saw such anger in the man, and it became more apparent with each day they travelled, and each argument he had with Caeles. She recalled the look in his eyes when the magus had shown his doubt at Gabel’s competency: like fire, burning a fierce red for just a second before putting itself out. She had since tried to convince herself it hadn’t happened, but every time the image came to mind she also remembered the poem he had written.
She was abruptly brought back to the present by Gabel kicking earth into the flames.
‘The wood’s damp,’ he growled. ‘This won’t stay alight much longer.’
‘We have more,’ said Caeles, returning and dropping his bundle straight onto the fire. The magus put his own bundle to the side, leaving it for later.
‘This should do it.’
‘I heard more movement in the trees,’ Gabel told them. ‘It came from the direction you were heading.’
‘Didn’t hear a thing.’
Gabel shrugged and played with the fire. Rowan was breaking open a crust of bread and handing it around.
‘We haven’t seen any goyles,’ she said. ‘Maybe we’re safe out here.’
‘Or maybe they’re gathering forces, creating battleplans,’ laughed Caeles. ‘Or perhaps they’re burrowing underground, so they can burst up through the fire and catch us all off guard.’
‘She’s just concerned,’ Gabel warned.
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I was just pointing something out.’
‘It makes no difference,’ said Caeles. ‘We’re all right now, and we probably will be until morning.’
A sudden a rush of wind blasted across the clearing, putting out the heated conversation along with the fire. Kindling scattered through the opening between Caeles and Gabel, and ashes spiralled into the air and glittered against the night’s sky.
A dark blur approached rapidly from the south-west, and by this time Gabel was already putting himself between Rowan and the indistinct figure, who rocketed past them both and around, sweeping Caeles from his feet as he attempted to stand.
‘Get down!’ Gabel commanded Rowan.
‘Won’t help,’ said a metallic-sounding voice. It came from the centre of the circle. In the black scar of the fire’s remains stood the cloth-covered ninja. ‘In fact, it won’t even come close.’
‘What do you want?’ Caeles asked. To Rowan he sounded almost bored, as though expecting the confrontation. She wondered what he and the magus had been talking about.
Had it been me? she couldn’t help but think. Am I to be talked about in private, and wait like a child as the grown-ups discuss the next step?
‘Before, I wanted to kill you,’ the stranger said, sparks dancing around his feet. ‘I know you are a cyborg, and that you are abnormal,’ he continued, indicating the old man.
‘I am a magus,’ he said simply.
‘And you,’ the Scathac said, spinning so quickly that it was almost unseen, and so that the last few sparks rose up and settled in his thick dark hair. He pointed an accusing finger at Gabel. ‘You are also … different.’
‘So tell us what you want,’ the hunter demanded. He held Rowan behind him, his rough hands on her waist, keeping her back. ‘What do you want if you no longer want to kill us?’
‘I want to help you, because you are all enemies of Tan Cleric—’
The Scathac stripped off the belt that covered his eyes and pulled down the mask. It was a woman, dark-skinned with startling all-green eyes. A heavy mat of hair hung down over her well-defined cheekbones. She unfastened the voice-temper and let it hang down around her neck.
‘— And I am missing a son.’
*
Eighteen
THE SCATHAC NINJA
The woman in black turned to show her face to Gabel and Rowan, who now stood apart and looked on in surprise. Then the woman crossed her legs and sat down, straight onto the cooling remains of the fire.
‘How do you know about Tan Cleric?’ Caeles asked. He had his hand ready to draw his sword, yet he already knew he didn’t need it.
‘I was following you through the forests,’ she explained. ‘And I heard you and the old man talking of him. You sounded as though you don’t like him very much.’ Her thick lips parted in a wide, white smile.
‘You could say that,’ Caeles muttered.
‘Who is Tan Cleric?’ asked Gabel.
‘He’s a guy I used to know. Insane. I never expected to see him again.’
‘You!’ the woman said, indicating Caeles. The curved blade of her wrist-mounted kukri gleamed. ‘You’re just like him, made of metal on the inside. That’s why I couldn’t trust you before; I thought you were one of his people.’
‘You haven’t told us why you’re here, or who you are,’ Gabel growled.
‘I am Sarai Catling,’ she said, standing back. ‘My son has been captured by Cleric, and he’s being held in the rainforest.’
‘This has nothing to do with our mission,’ said Gabel. ‘I’m truly sorry your child has been captured by this man, but it has no bearing with our own objective. We can’t help you.’
‘Wait,’ said the magus. ‘Joseph, this is part of our mission.’
‘What do you mean? Why didn’t you say anything about this Cleric person?’
‘You didn’t need to know anything until we got there. But now, I suppose it would be okay to tell you. Sarai, would you sit down with us? I’m sure we can get another fire going.’
~
War had made the planet barren, the magus explained. Man and creature suffered, but a few of the more stubborn lived on. Things changed, and for the worse. Things became very different, but there were reminders of the Conflict all around. There were things left behind, and new things brought here from other places.
‘Like what?’ asked Gabel.
‘Like the theriopes and the sanguisuga; the rusalki. And all manner of other creatures. Gabel, this is your work, your job. It pays for your food and your accommodation. It is why you are here now, with the rest of us. Because of these things that came, but should not be here.’
‘From Hadentes,’ Caeles scoffed. ‘These came from Hell, you’re saying.’
‘Hadentes is adjacent to our own world. Think of them as two sheets of parchment laid across one another. How easy would it be for wet ink to leak from one, to the other? And how easily could you punch through both with a sharpened blade? Consider this in three dimensions. If souls can pass through this membrane in death, surely living beings can slip out in the opposite direction?’
‘With a big enough hole,’ said Sarai. ‘Carved by a sharp enough blade.’
‘A leftover from the Conflict,’ said Caeles, sitting up against a tree, scraping at the soil until he found rubescent clay, and then rubbed it between his palms. ‘You’re talking about a weapon.’
‘Exactly,’ nodded the old man. ‘Something cataclysmic.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There is a weapon. A man-made weapon within the crater in which Shianti is situated, a relic that could destroy this continent and everyone upon it. It is called the Hahnium, and it wields the power of radioactivity. It was designed to destroy men – soldiers – and cyborgs like yourself, Mister Caeles.’ Caeles gave a polite nod. ‘Birds, animals, fish; all plants: trees, flowers, weeds. The grass. The grounds, the earth. Everything. It is designed to destroy everything with its radiation. And it may do, if it falls into the wrong hands.’
‘With weapons,’ Caeles muttered, ‘all hands are the wrong hands.’
‘So this is what you are hiring me for?’ Gabel asked. ‘To
stop this weapon from being used?’
‘Precisely.’
‘And what has Tan Cleric got to do with it?’ asked Sarai.
‘I believe Tan Cleric,’ the magus said quietly, ‘is one of the monsters we seek to destroy.’
‘Wonderful,’ Caeles muttered. He had palmed the clay until it oozed pink liquid, and it slipped from his muddied fingers.
~
With the arrival of Sarai, the journey became more interesting for some and less bearable for others. After it was agreed that the Scathac could accompany the group, at least temporarily, the baggage-horse was relieved of its burden and the reins were handed over, the luggage divided amongst the animals and strapped behind the saddles. None of the horses seemed to mind the extra weight, but Gabel seemed to worry that the increased load would slow the beasts if a chase were to break out.
Sarai talked little, letting her animal carry her without fuss. She avoided any form of conversation, only nodding at or hedging any attempts made by the others to unbury more about her.
Rowan took to riding by her side, continuing to try and prise information about her past and son. The Scathac gave nothing away; however one day, a few days from Iilyani, she seemed to soften a little, and made quiet conversation with the group as they ate.
‘My son and I had been travelling for a long while,’ she began. ‘I come from a place over the ocean, and I was carrying my Isaac in my belly at the time.’ Her fingers touched the fabric over her stomach, as if remembering stroking her distended abdomen all those years ago. ‘We had to fight to exist, struggling against the Luxers, whose numbers and zeal had been swelling in other lands. After a time we decided to move on a kind of pilgrimage, through the rainforests to the west, moving east.’
‘This direction,’ Rowan said quietly.
‘That’s right. We were passing through the Sinh-ha Plains when my Isaac ran from me.’ She tore a piece of bread from the loaf that was being passed around, and stayed silent for a short while. ‘Because of this man, Cleric. He desperately seeks out those who are different. I believe he thinks himself some type of scientist, but I never came close to uncovering his goals. Cleric wrongly assumed that my son was as I am, “different”, and pursued us. I believe that Isaac left me so that I might be safe.’
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