by Stephen Hunt
Cassandra spoke to Alexamir. ‘I spotted a telescope clipped back there with you. What do we face?’
Alexamir found the leather-lined tube and extended it in the direction of the two aircraft. ‘A pair of wooden pigeons. Rice eaters inside, a single pilot in each kite.’
Skyguard fighter craft rather than spotters. They’d have the edge in manoeuvrability – she checked her dwindling fuel reserves – as well as more time in the air. The Rodalians wouldn’t even need to force the Lightning Gull down; they could just wait her out on their full tanks and anticipate her landing. ‘We have to take them on, no choice.’
‘Rodal’s spirits have cursed us,’ said Alexamir. ‘Jealous of the greatest thief to climb her cliffs and steal across her cold, hard stone.’
‘The greatest in self-conceit, perhaps,’ said Cassandra, before barking a warning. ‘Clearing the gun!’ She pressed her hand around the cannon grip mounted below the dials and squeezed its trigger for a test burst. Nothing apart from dull empty thuds inside the nose cone. Cassandra groaned. She had checked the flying wing’s fuel reserves, but the nomad’s ill-judged act of arson and the rapidly arriving airfield staff had thrown checking the ammunition out of her mind. Nearly out of fuel and not a single shell for the gun. Cursed indeed.
How very strange, mused Duncan, to be in Weyland at last. And nothing like I’d imagined. Every night while imprisoned as a slave he’d dreamt of returning home. Long febrile nights, hungry and tired beyond exhaustion, sweating like an animal in the furnace-like sky mines above Vandia’s great stratovolcano. During those hard, endless days, Duncan’s lost life in Northhaven had seemed impossibly distant. Another age. But his conditions had changed: he’d risen to the rank of free citizen of the imperium through his own efforts. Of late, he rarely, if ever, dwelled on his old life. And now he was back in Weyland, everything about his old land felt unreal. Was it that Duncan was finally home, or that he was flying towards Arcadia’s royal palace that made a dream of the sights fleeting past his helo’s porthole? Arcadia, a city resonant with memories, even though he had never set foot in the capital before. Benner Landor deeply regretted not dispatching his children here to be educated; keeping to the last promise he reluctantly made Duncan’s dying mother. In another life, Duncan would have visited the palace on different terms … attending a coming-out celebration, introduced at court by one of Benner Landor’s well-greased political contacts. Instead, he was here as – what? – a conqueror, a rescuer, an avenger or perhaps, an ally? Duncan had arrived with three vast Vandian warships, steel cathedrals turned horizontal and made thundering javelins powered by engines that flung them through the sky faster than sound itself – the Warhawk, the Empress Gauntlet, and the Fleetwing. Inside those three warships, the fleet transported nine legions – veteran troops of the imperial army augmented by house forces and levies – their long hangar bays crammed full with helo squadrons and a full armoured battalion’s worth of hulking mechanical vehicles. Before landing, the fleet had passed low over Weyland’s capital, no doubt throwing its citizens into a fine panic. Vandia’s expeditionary force had settled in the vineyards outside Arcadia, leaving some poor landowner’s living a smoking stubble, a gale of crisped leaves blown towards the endless green horizon of the Lancean Ocean. So it was that on this strange day, Duncan found himself accompanying Princess Helrena and Paetro on a troop transport leaving the princess’s ship, the Fleetwing. Their helo sported four vertical blades whirling above its metal fuselage, forty seats at the rear and a cockpit for two pilots and a couple of highborn passengers; just part of a squadron heading towards the palace at the city’s heart. Blade-topped aircraft skimming the capital’s rooftops as they buzzed towards the ancient bastion. Duncan wondered what the locals made of the sight; Arcadians rushing out as small as ants below, filling the streets, gawping at the humming helos darting across Arcadia’s skyline. None of his countrymen had seen anything resembling a helo before, let alone the vast metal behemoths used to ferry Vandia’s legions to landfall, each vessel twenty times the length of a nautical frigate, bristling with cannons, gun turrets, bomb-bays and rocket mountings. Craftsmen in the imperial foundries had shaped the vessels’ prows into long, sinuous dragon-skulls; lighthouse-sized lanterns for eyes which glowed bright demon-crimson when flying at night. An unimaginable fortune in metal forged in the form of destructive steel dragons. After taking in the fiery engines at the stern and blasting stabilizing jets below her triangular steel fins, most nations’ locals fled in terror at the first sight of a Vandian warship. Duncan had laughed when he had first noticed Weyland’s newly formed skyguard trying to keep up with the Vandian warships – completely unaware they were only matching the fleet’s sluggish cruising speed in preparation for landing. Twenty-rotor aircraft trying to keep pace, the royal black boar of Weyland painted proudly in the centre of yellow and green circles on vertical rudder tails, the craft little more than canvas stretched over pinewood frames, tiny engines belching corn ether as they swerved out of the way of the metal monsters invading their airspace. Once upon a time such aircrafts’ presence above Weyland would have made Duncan’s heart swell with patriotic pride. Now they were a reminder to him of how very far he had progressed from his undistinguished beginnings. Primitive toys buzzing modern vessels, when each warship was capable of razing Weyland’s capital city to the ground and salting its ruins in a barrage of deadly, fiery rain. Up in the helo’s cockpit, Princess Helrena seemed oblivious to the stir the empire’s arrival had caused. She was in a sour mood and Duncan couldn’t blame her. Despite Helrena’s hard-won position among the fleet’s command, Prince Gyal and her brutish cousin, Baron Machus, missed no opportunity to exclude the princess from their councils and the planning for the Weyland expeditionary force. It was only because Helrena had resorted to bribing naval officers for information that should have been hers by right, that the princess was even aware there had been radio contact between the expeditionary force and Vandia’s local embassy. It seemed there was trouble in Weyland, and Prince Gyal was eager to capitalize on it to ensure his return to the empire was properly triumphant … a silk carpet rolled out all the way to the impending vacancy on the imperial throne. Helrena had told Duncan that just the thought she might have to bend her knee as a subject of an Emperor Gyal – and by extension, to the princess’s deadly motherin-law, Circae – was enough to make her redouble her efforts to take her fair share of glory from this campaign. If her exclusion wasn’t enough, the camp followers travelling with the fleet included Adella, simpering at the baron with the brute’s other mistresses. A constant reminder to Duncan of how foolish he had been in once trusting her, loving her. I’ll make my fate here. And a better fate than hers.
Paetro sat perched on the seat next to Duncan’s in the helo’s troop hold. ‘Does returning to your home make you yearn for your old life, lad?’
‘Hardly at all, to tell the truth. It’s as though I don’t belong here anymore.’
‘Aye, visiting the imperium will do that to a man. You come back home and all those grand houses you remember have been turned into wooden-walled hovels, all the wide streets remade as mud tracks while your back was turned.’
Duncan nodded toward Prince Helrena’s position in the cockpit. ‘I feel the same as the princess … somewhere out there we’ll find Lady Cassandra. Scared. Fearful. Praying for us to come for her.’
Paetro grunted in amusement. ‘I doubt that. The more scared she is, the more she’ll take it out on whatever poor unlucky bastard’s got her in chains. That’s the young highness I helped raise.’
‘Her captors are about to get a whole lot unluckier,’ said Duncan.
‘About that, I’d say you’re right,’ said Paetro. ‘But you remember something, for Prince Gyal and the baron, none of this is about bringing the young highness back alive. Lady Cassandra’s little better than a standard to be sliced out of the hands of the slaves who revolted against the empire, and if that flag comes back broken in half and blood-soaked, that’s j
ust part of the butcher’s bill. It’s the insult against Vandia’s reputation that can’t be allowed to stand. The imperium’s like one of the triku crime families. It’s been disrespected, and should the empire let that dishonour go unpunished, its rivals will start to wonder what other indignities it might permit, and pretty soon it won’t be able to walk down the street without someone trying to stick a blade in its belly. Vandia’s surrounded by enemies, and they’re carrying a lot more than daggers.’
Just the thought of Lady Cassandra coming to harm was more than Duncan could bear to dwell on. ‘She’s a lot more than a flag to me,’ said Duncan. But surely it won’t come to that? Father Carnehan had grabbed the girl from the battlefield. The long journey from Weyland to the empire had clearly left the pastor unhinged. There had been no ransom demands. It was just a mad act of defiance, petty revenge for the skels’ raid on Northhaven. Paetro was right. Cassandra was likely tied up in some barn in Northhaven, swearing at her captors, making their lives hard in every way possible. ‘And damn the empire’s revenge.’
‘That’s why we’re in a troop transporter on the way to this little covenant,’ said Paetro. ‘Someone with Lady Cassandra’s interests at heart has to attend, because it certainly won’t be Prince Gyal or Baron Machus.’
Yes, they needed to push for Cassandra’s safe release. And if Duncan got a chance to blunt the worst excesses of the empire’s mission to punish the slave revolt, he would be doing both nations a favour. Not that Duncan would receive any gratitude or recognition for it, but someone had to try, and Duncan Landor was the only one with the fleet who cared a damn for Weyland. He stared thoughtfully through the gun port. The concentric rings of street-lined canals below were tightening to a single bull’s-eye in the centre of Arcadia, a high crenellated wall protecting the royal palace, and then their squadron’s fleeting shadows were passing over private orchards and gardens, ornamental streams brittle with broken ice. The squadron slowed. Ahead, King Marcus’s palace stood three storeys high, honey-coloured brick punctuated by hundreds of tall oblong windows running across the lower two storeys, circular ornamental windows up on the third, three wings of stone and terraces reflected in artificial square lakes surrounding the palace. To Duncan’s eyes, Weyland’s palace resembled an elaborate version of the doll’s house that Willow used to play with. He had grown accustomed to the imposing and functional might of the Castle of Snakes, surrounded by the cloud-scraping towers of Vandis. The empire’s capital city was like an ants’ nest, crowded, packed, and climbing hungrily towards the sky. Duncan’s helo set down in flower beds across from an orangery, rotors blowing away clouds of light powdered snow before slowing to a stop. Baron Machus and Prince Gyal had already disembarked from their craft and were striding towards a gathering of dignitaries on the palace terrace to welcome the newcomers. Princess Helrena left the helo flanked by her troops with as much dignity as she could muster, trying not to look like a child hustling after the adults as they gathered to discuss the business of grown-ups. We’re as welcome here among the expeditionary force as our legions must be in Weyland.
Duncan and Paetro climbed out of a sliding cabin door, joining the train of Vandians at their rear. They entered the palace through a balustrade graced by sculpted figures, vaulted ceiling held up by columns of veined pink marble, the Vandians’ boots echoing down the corridor as they paraded along its length. This sounded very much like a conquerors’ march to Duncan’s ears. Paetro pushed through the crowd, guarding Helrena’s back and leaving Duncan with soldiers and assorted staff officers from the command. We should be safe enough in the king’s palace. Although it had occurred to Duncan that on the battlefields to come, that would not be the case. How easy for Helrena to catch a ‘stray’ bullet in the fog of war, or be ordered to assault a well-defended position with a force not up to the task. How much easier for Prince Gyal to leave his main rival to the imperial throne as a corpse on foreign soil. Weyland’s courtiers and palace staff milled around in clusters, staring curiously at the foreign force marching through their palace. One of the courtiers, perhaps bolder than the others, came quick-stepping after the Vandians, falling in alongside Duncan, moving quickly despite her obvious pregnancy. A pretty young woman in her early twenties wearing a cream dropped-shoulder blouse designed to flatter her extended stomach, her pale shoulders covered by a burgundy-coloured courtier’s cloak.
‘Duncan Landor? Duncan of Northhaven?
‘You know me?’ asked Duncan, surprised. He was sure if he had ever met a woman as attractive as this he would be able to put a name to her face.
‘It would be hard not to,’ said the woman, twisting coyly at the golden locks of her hair, ‘for there is a painting of you hanging in my husband’s hall.’
Duncan gazed uncertainly at the woman’s mischievous face. Has she taken leave of her senses? ‘Next to a bust of myself in marble, perhaps?’
She smiled sympathetically, a sweet flash of white teeth surrounded by her winsome face. ‘I’m sorry. I forget; you don’t know me at all, when I have been told so much about you. I am Leyla Landor, Benner Landor’s new wife.’
‘New wife?’ Duncan was astonished. Ever since the death of Duncan’s mother, there had been women calling at Hawkland Park, huntresses hoping to tempt the rich old widower back into matrimony. But Duncan’s father had sent each fortune-seeker packing, anchoring his life around the estate and his house’s holdings. How in the world had this woman convinced Duncan’s father to marry her, however beautiful and comely she was? The answer struck Duncan with the force of a landslide. After the slavers’ raid on Northhaven, when Benner Landor had lost his son and daughter, he hadn’t just suffered the loss of his children … old man Landor had also forfeit his house’s heirs. And this young attractive woman looked to be heavily pregnant and near to her full term. Yes, that makes sense. Leyla Landor wasn’t a replacement for Duncan’s mother: she was a replacement for him. Duncan didn’t know how to feel about that. He had chosen to stay in Vandia, to carve out a new life for himself, far removed from everything that was familiar. And even before that, back in Weyland, Duncan had been planning to strike out on his own with Adella by his side. Shouldering the heavy role of heir to Hawkland Park had hardly figured in his plans, and yet … finding himself so easily replaced; that was a bitter fruit to suck on.
‘I understand it’s a lot of news for you to take in,’ said Leyla. ‘But it’s been a long time since you disappeared. Even when Willow returned alive carrying word of your achievements in far-called lands, we were never sure how you really fared. Your father’s been terribly concerned for you. Despite my best efforts, I fear he rather blamed Willow for returning without you.’
As well he might. Duncan frowned. ‘Where is Willow now?’
‘Your sister’s here in the capital with your father. Willow will be eager to see you again; and I can’t wait to tell Benner of your safe return … he’ll be so happy.’ Her face turned thoughtful and concerned. ‘But you should understand that there have been a great many changes in Willow’s life. She’s now Lady Wallingbeck, the wife of the Viscount of Belinus Hall.’
‘A lady … and married? Now I know I’m dreaming.’ Duncan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Shock after shock, in rapid succession, and nothing that could be called a true homecoming. It was as though he had slept for centuries and awakened to find everything familiar changed, with just enough left to confound him. But then, what had he expected? His father to go into mourning at the park, turning away all visitors and neglecting his business until he died of a broken heart? Willow playing the part of grief-stricken sibling for escaping to join the slave revolt, well knowing how damaging her treachery was to Duncan’s prospects. Actually, that was more or less how he had imagined matters progressing at home; but never this. How easily Duncan Landor’s presence had been supplanted, his existence lost among Weyland’s daily business. If Duncan had ever entertained any doubts about staying in the imperium and refusing the princess’s offer of passage b
ack to Weyland, they vanished now. I’m not home anymore. I’m as much a visitor here as Helrena and Paetro are.
‘Willow is expecting her first child,’ said Leyla. ‘The next Viscount Wallingbeck, with God’s benediction. Due to arrive a little after my own birth. Willow’s child and your new stepbrother will be small blessings in very troubled times.’
A child on the way already? Saints, how Willow’s suffering in the sky mines must have changed her. No longer satisfied with her stupid library and a quiet, bookish life at home, she was married for position and title to an aristocrat? Expecting a child? The only way this was going to seem stranger was if it transpired Willow’s husband had been born in the Lancean Ocean and his sister was due to give birth to a mermaid. He sighed. What in the world has been going on here in my absence? ‘My sister makes her own decisions. Always has and always will. On the way here I heard there was trouble in Weyland, but very little concerning its source?’