by Stephen Hunt
Carter reached behind his shirt and touched his back. It was crusted over, most of the pain gone, just a dull itch remaining when he touched the scar tissue. ‘If that’s so, what do you call sailing vessels?’
‘Boats,’ said the surgeon. ‘Or on the Plunderbird, “marks” or “catch” will do nicely.’
‘I’m a poor catch,’ said Carter.
‘That much I don’t dispute.’
‘You have my father and friend hostage?’
Mapple snorted. ‘Hostage? Worth much silver, are you?’
‘I must be, or why would a crew of pirates hold on to me – or cure me?’
‘Pirates? Oh, we’re never airbooters,’ said Mapple. ‘We’re privateers.’
‘Is there much difference?’
‘The difference between a prison cell and a gallows, in the right company. Or perhaps the wrong one. We only swoop when we hold letters of marque from a powerful patron. So, you’re really the pastor’s son, are you?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘There’s a thing, now.’
‘My father is alive – he’s here?’
‘Both, last time I checked. Same for that itinerant book-botherer travelling with you.’
Carter didn’t understand any of this. Patrons? Pirates? Privateers? He should be dead, a bloated corpse bobbing on the ocean’s surface. Unless the aircrew were planning to sell him off as a slave for a second time. Or receive a fat purse from King Marcus for turning them over to the usurper’s forces. ‘Why am I alive?’
‘Too deep a question for me, young-un,’ said the surgeon.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘That I do, but it isn’t Mapple’s place to tell you.’ The portly old man stood up and stretched. ‘I can tell you one thing. The dog that did that to your back didn’t want you dead. He was an expert at his craft. A minute or two more of the lash and you wouldn’t be here. He teased you right to the edge and then intentionally stepped back from the brink.’
‘He was an amateur flogger,’ said Carter. ‘But a professional bastard.’
‘No, I don’t think so. I was trained in the Burn. Surgeon and torturer are two sides of the same coin out there. The man that did this to you has mastered his trade.’
‘He’s a dead man, either way.’
‘That’s the spirit, young-un. Show a little gumption and folks on board might keep you around, rather than casting you out with the contents of last night’s piss-pot.’
‘Not much point in healing me for that.’
‘Mapple serves his captain. On your feet, lad. Black Barnaby wanted to meet you when you’re fixed, and you’re as fixed as my sickbay is going to see you.’
It proved to be a short trip between the sickbay and the pirate commander; narrow corridors, cold fuselage, riding a series of room-sized elevators transferring flying boats and fighter planes between hangar decks and the carrier’s repair workshops. Crewmen, all armed, swaggered around as though they were the lords of the sky. Maybe they are at that. The surgeon led Carter through a hatch and into a substantial hall that wouldn’t have looked out of place inside a castle. Walls hung with hunting trophies, not the usual bears’ heads and stags’ antlers; instead, carved wooden figureheads taken from sailing ships. Eagles, curly-haired maidens, sea gods, dolphins, unicorns; multiple painted eyes seeming to follow Carter as he advanced towards a throne at the far end – simple dark oak with a fan of wooden propeller rotors rising out of its rear. Doors opened to either side of the throne, giving on to the aircraft’s bridge, airmen manning long banks of instruments, spotters on swivel-mounted telescopes while crew strode across the floor’s planking. Power here, it seemed, resided close to the cockpit. The black-bearded man who filled the throne wore a crimson jacket, brown trousers with a military stripe, long leather boots draped insolently over the throne’s side; one hand clutching a glass of red wine, the other with a thumb tucked behind a military leather clip holster holding two pistols and multiple ammunition pouches. There weren’t many privateers idling in what passed for the Plunderbird’s throne room, a cabin boy and a scattering of officers, and a woman that was hard to miss … an exotic-looking privateer who looked to have a mixture of Weyland and Rodalian blood. Around Carter’s age, she stood alongside the throne, her dark hair tied back below a crimson aviator’s wedge cap, the competitive gaze of her fierce clever eyes tracking Carter’s entrance as closely as the ships’ ransacked figureheads.
The ship’s surgeon bowed before the throne, indicated the Weylander by his side, and then departed.
Carter gazed carefully around him before speaking. ‘You’re Black Barnaby?’
‘I much prefer Brave Barnaby,’ laughed the man. ‘But for some reason the name never sticks.’
The pirate looked oddly familiar, although Carter had never met him. Must be his portrait drawn on all those newspaper covers. ‘Try painting your carrier yellow instead.’
The woman reached for a dagger on her belt. ‘Do you call us cowards?’
‘Peace, Aurora. You must forgive my daughter. She gets cabin-fever when she hasn’t killed a groundling for a few weeks. Our crew are traditionalists and they prefer to fly with traditional colours.’
‘Yet here you sit on a throne.’
‘Just another wooden seat, whelp. We elect our leaders,’ boomed Black Barnaby. ‘And bow before no one.’
‘That’s good,’ said Carter. ‘I won’t curtsy before you, then.’
‘He’s got spirit,’ said Aurora, ‘I’ll say that for the dog. Is he a groundling noble?’
‘Another book-botherer,’ said Black Barnaby. ‘If the pastor and the young guild courier are to be taken at their word. And who would doubt a priest?’
‘Such broad shoulders,’ said Aurora, admiringly. ‘That’s a waste of a life, buried in a hold with only paper and dusty groundlings for company.’
Carter nodded in her direction. ‘I always thought much the same thing.’
‘Ha! I only had to gaze upon your spine to know you were an awkward sod,’ announced the captain. ‘Nobles still like to whip manners into their peasants, I see. Groundlings have to be expertly acquainted with bowing and scraping to survive. That’s why I’m up here.’
‘And why am I?’
‘Let’s call it idle curiosity,’ said Black Barnaby.
‘Why don’t we call it an obligation, instead?’ spoke a familiar voice behind Carter. He turned around. His father had entered the chamber. ‘I thought we agreed that my son would stay in the sickbay for the flight.’
‘You expressed that wish,’ said Barnaby. ‘I don’t recall agreeing to it.’
Carter was confused. From their tone, it was as though his father and this rogue had more of a history together than merely hostage and captor. Had the pastor’s monastery been involved with the kelpers’ fuel smuggling out to the Plunderbird? ‘You know this airbooter?’
Black Barnaby laughed and spoke for Carter’s father. ‘Me and this good man? Can’t a privateer occasionally request the mediations of a pastor, or are we also godless in your eyes, whelp?’ Black Barnaby’s needling brought back memories to Carter, a time when his and his father’s minds had fused under Sariel’s sorcery. He had recollections of blood and fighting; terrible and blasted. But none of this pirate, no memories from the air or of the Plunderbird.
‘That’s enough,’ said Jacob.
Carter looked at his father in astonishment. ‘Is this our ride south?’
Black Barnaby stretched languidly out in his throne. ‘Eventually the light dawns on even the dimmest horizon.’
‘We need to follow fast, and a carrier plane riding the arrow is the best I can do. Beggars can’t be choosers, Carter.’
‘And all priests are beggars,’ grinned the privateer captain. ‘On your knees to the saints, on your knees to the church and its bishops, on your knees to your congregation with the church plate extended and rattling. It’s a surprise you can still stand with the sores you must have developed on your knees.’
Carter felt
a flash of anger. ‘Better an honest parish for a trade than raiding innocent merchantmen.’
‘Innocent?’ Black Barnaby rocked with laughter at Carter’s words. ‘What do you think the main trade east to west across the Lancean Ocean is? Fine silks and spices? They don’t have much call for extravagances in the Burn. It is guns and arms and sharp steel that flow, along with men who’re desperate enough to sell their skills across the ocean and know which end of a pike to stick a peasant with. This month, the Plunderbird flies as the skyguard of the Three Cities of Abbarriss, hunting for boats running supplies to their most troublesome neighbour, the Dukedom of Opard. There are Weyland clippers sailing west with cargoes of greased rifles and crates of bullets paid for in blood, because that’s all they have left to pay with in the Burn. And after all those centuries of war, even the ruins of the ruins being fought over, it takes a lot of squeezing to ring blood out of that much ash.’
‘You freely admit to hunting Weyland vessels?’ said Carter.
‘Compared to your state’s arms trade, what we’re about is almost missionary work,’ grinned Black Barnaby.
‘Maybe you should apply to the church council and study to wear the black.’
‘He’s your son, all right,’ said Black Barnaby to the pastor. ‘The good man you are presently, of course. I can hear your cant in every word he utters.’
‘You don’t know who I am, now,’ growled Jacob.
‘I can’t predict what you’re going to do next,’ said Black Barnaby. ‘But then, which of us ever could? What the hell do you think you’re doing travelling south? Into the mouth of the shit-storm brewing down there, and for what? A young noblewoman your whelp fancies?’
‘It’s true then?’ said the captain’s daughter. ‘These fools are following a girl? I thought the flying boat’s crew were joking when they spun me that yarn.’
‘No joke,’ said Black Barnaby.
‘Not to me,’ said Carter.
‘I hope she’s beautiful, groundling,’ said Aurora.
‘She’s the right woman,’ said Carter. ‘The only one. It took me a long time to realize that. I would cross all of Pellas on foot twice over to find her again.’
‘Then I hope you know a good cobbler,’ said the pirate captain. ‘You understand it won’t matter soon, even if you succeed. I foresee a long stream of boats sailing from west to east; carrying tutors to educate soft Weylanders in how centuries of war have elevated conflict into a higher form. That’s all you’d be rescuing the girl for. The way things are going in Weyland, it won’t be long before there are prefects and assemblymen breaking off and titling themselves kings and dukes, offering me letters of marque to hunt for them.’
‘There’s only one true king in Weyland,’ said Carter.
‘You’re a believer, whelp? You share that in common with your old da, then. I find kings are a lot like gods. So many to choose from, and believing in exclusivity is never as profitable as embracing the many. Poor Weyland … a boy the king calls pretender and a king the boy calls usurper. And freemen of the air who only care which noble will pay most to guarantee sole use of the title. King, king, king. Such a stubby little word, given how many lust after it. Maybe if it was longer and harder to pronounce, the Burn wouldn’t be the Burn and we would all live in a land of milk and honey.’
‘Forget her, book-botherer. Fly west with us, instead,’ invited Aurora. ‘You’ll meet few nobles on the far side of the ocean that don’t style themselves kings or queens.’
‘This whelp’s not for you, Aurora. Can’t you see he’s fixing to die nobly? Along, I suspect, with a great many others. Famine is coming for Weyland,’ said the captain, swigging from his wine cup. ‘But it’ll be a feast for us. Nothing drives up the price of our services like a bit of honest competition.’
‘The word honest doesn’t belong on your lips,’ said Jacob. ‘That’s the province of people who rise with the sun and break their backs in the field every day to provide for their children.’
‘Yet, neither of us are farmers out a-toiling,’ said Black Barnaby, indicating the trophy-heavy walls of his chamber. ‘And do I not provide handsomely for my children?’
‘I can’t complain,’ said Aurora.
‘You do. Frequently and loudly. I suppose you must have hundreds of bastard half-sisters and brothers scattered along the coastline who might take issue with my generosity. Of course, if I knew who they were, I’d do more for them.’
‘Try flying over the port-side whorehouses and bombing them with coins,’ said Aurora.
‘And how then would I pay you and the rest of my valiant crew?’ laughed Black Barnaby. He raised his cup and called for more wine, a young cabin boy rushing forward with a crystal decanter. ‘Will you two groundling rascals not drink with me?’
‘Carter’s barely out of the sickbay,’ said Jacob, ‘and wine dulls my wits.’
‘That’s rather the point. And you can hardly grow much duller, good man.’ He waved them away. ‘Go. Go. I was in a happy mood before you came in. You drain my natural cheerfulness as fast as an engine with a spray of bullet-holes in its fuel chamber. Away with you, before you convert me into a dour saint-loving pilgrim and I swap my carrier for a monk’s coarse robes.’
‘Why’s he flying us south?’ asked Carter, once they had put the chamber behind them, exchanging it for a narrow corridor with porthole views out of the fuselage. They were in the heart of the spear, fast-flowing winds shredding the clouds, rivulets of water running across the glass. No fighter squadrons or flying boats circling around them in the air now, all the little birds landed inside the flight decks under the carrier’s monstrous wings.
‘Pirates are romantics at heart,’ said Jacob. ‘Maybe your story touched his heart.’
‘He has a heart?’
‘Barnaby has a sense of honour, in his way. Let us say that this passage on his carrier helps settle some debts that were long resting in the dust.’
‘Please tell me you never served with this crew,’ said Carter, wishing his suspicions away.
‘I don’t have to lie to you to tell you that. Barnaby has only ever fought for money and wealth. And wealth makes a good servant but a poor master. I’m going to remind King Marcus of that fact one day very soon.’
‘We’re travelling south for Willow.’
‘You don’t need to remind me, boy. But it won’t just be Benner Landor and his house’s hirelings facing us in the capital. The usurper has too many scores to settle with us to simply let matters rest.’
‘Damn him. I’ve never even met the man.’
‘He sold you and countless thousands of Weylanders he was sworn to protect into slavery for imperial silver. He’s as responsible for your mother’s death as the skel slavers and the imperium. That’s all you need to know about the usurper.’
‘Sometimes I—’
‘—wish you had taken up Sariel on his offer?’ said Jacob. ‘Allowed him to carry you and Willow away to some quiet far-called country where news of our home’s troubles might drift in over the radio relays in five hundred years’ time as distant history.’
‘Something like that.’
Carter’s father halted him in the corridor. ‘Maybe that would have been for the best. I know I’d sleep easier knowing you were safely out of Weyland. But you’re a man now, and I won’t demand you do the wrong thing just because it’s the easy option. Doing the right thing often comes with a cost. It sure as hell comes with no guarantees. Bad men can end up occupying thrones and good men can end up face down in the dirt with a dagger in their back. Your mother was the best woman I ever knew, and she died at the hands of slavers she’d never heard of, by arrangement of a king she’d never met, in exchange for wealth she wouldn’t have given a damn for, along with half the friends and neighbours she loved buried with her. There was no fairness, no sense, and if anyone could call that justice I’d damn them as a devil.’
‘And you? Are you a good man? The one that pirate scorns.’
‘I’m good enough,’ said Jacob, patting his twin pistols. ‘Or we’re all in trouble.’
‘And if not?’
‘Man’s got to die doing something, Carter. You have something else you need to do?’
No. On reflection, he really didn’t.
EIGHT
THE WALLS OF THE LEAGUE
Lady Cassandra Skar sat, shivering, in the rear of the wagon. Her legs were manacled together, but with enough play on the chains that she could shuffle about the wagon if the mood took her. Her hands were still bound behind her back, chafing, gloveless and chilly. It was freezing in these monstrous damned Rodalian Mountains and it didn’t seem to matter how many layers you wore or blankets you wrapped around yourself, the winds would seek you out like snakes of ice, slipping through the smallest gap to bite into your bones. She could see why superstitious savages like Sheplar Lesh treated the winds as spirits and worshipped them. You always worshipped the things which had power over you. In Vandia that was the emperor and the Cult of the Imperium Cosmocrator. Here it was the high winds. That she was born of divine blood was of little concern to the weather as she rattled through the mountain passes. They travelled at such altitude that the air had thinned out, Cassandra having to breathe faster and harder, even gravity’s touch not as strong as the forest where she had been held previously. If only the local fools who tried to rescue me had made a better job of it.
As if the cold wasn’t bad enough, there was a constant whistling in the air that only varied in intensity as it slipped through the cracks and crags. Cassandra could tune it out for large periods of time, background noise she hardly noticed. And then suddenly it would reappear randomly at night when she was trying to go to sleep, or when she was eating a bowl of rice, and when it was there she would hear nothing else. It was almost enough to send her insane. It probably explained much about the demented Rodalian flyer and his people. When she complained to Sheplar Lesh and demanded something she could plug her ears with, he only laughed and told her that it was the spirit called Naimzeraw the Prankster, welcoming her to Rodal and trying to gauge the measure of a Vandian.