The Land You Never Leave

by Angus Watson

  “Who are you?” demanded Wulf. “Where are you? What do you—”

  Wulf’s eyes widened. Blood trickled from one nostril. He fell.

  “No!” shouted Sassa. She ran to him, falling down on her knees next to her husband.

  I warned you, said the voice. Stay silent, stay still, or die.

  Finnbogi didn’t dare turn his head, but he swivelled his eyes. Several squatches were walking towards them. They were similar to Ayla, the squatch from the Badlands, fur-covered and around twice the height of a man.

  Sofi Tornado nodded. She and Paloma Pronghorn ran at them. Paloma got further than Sofi, but both fell before they reached the beasts, and lay still.

  Erik blinked at Finn as if to say that they shouldn’t try anything. Finn looked at the prone figures of Sofi Tornado, Paloma Pronghorn and Wulf the Fat. He was so shocked, so aghast, that he almost ran at the squatches himself.

  Instead he stayed still, wondering what would happen next.

  The story continues in …

  WHERE GODS FEAR TO GO

  West of West: Book Three

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks first and foremost for my wife Nicola’s unceasing support. She continues to take my career of writing about monsters and warriors seriously, while she herself moves up the ranks of high finance. She is now director of the American operations of one of Europe’s biggest hedge funds, so we have moved to Manhattan. It’s an interesting place.

  Thanks to my sons Charlie and Otty, who are now four and two and the source of a large percentage of my joy. They’ve also managed to unearth my previously undiscovered temper, destroyed my social life and are the reason I’ve been to the cinema only once in the last year, but on balance I’m glad we had them.

  Thanks to my beta readers Amy Dean and Tim Watson. Amy particularly has put in an extraordinary amount of work in exchange, so far, for one lunch. She is promised untold riches and golden hats for her chickens when the sales hit the million mark. Tim has received nothing, but he’s my brother and responsible for getting me into fantasy in the first place, so it’s all his fault that I write these books at all.

  Thanks to my editor Jenni Hill at Orbit, excellent as ever, and to Nazia Khatun at Orbit for organising a host of marketing events, and to Joanna Kramer for putting the books together. Thanks to all the others at Orbit who produce such wonderful books and publicise them so effectively, and to their American counterparts at Hachette Publishing, particularly Will Hinton and Ellen Wright.

  Thanks to Richard Collins, a diligent copy-editor, who has to wade through and correct my semi-dyslexic spelling.

  Thanks to the organisers of Polcon in Lublin and Days of Fantasy in Wrocław, particularly Gosia Uchnast and Maria Chojnacka. These two Polish fantasy conventions shipped me out and put me up in exchange for me talking about myself. I had a wonderful time at both.

  Thanks to my agent Angharad Kowal, who works tirelessly selling my books around the world and pitching for those as yet elusive film rights.

  Thanks to Joyce Boxall, Eva Gabardo Lorenzo, Dannii Evans and Amber Scardino who have looked after the boys and allowed me to get on with the important business of making up stuff.

  Thanks to Sean Barrett who reads the audiobooks. I met him the other day and was not surprised to find that he’s an excellent fellow, as charming in real life as he is on tape.

  There are probably more people to thank, but I promised Charlie that I would make a Lego car with him when I finished my book. It has ninety-one pieces and every piece needs to be discussed for a good long while, so we’d better get started if we’re going to have it done by bathtime.

  extras

  meet the author

  Nicola Watson

  ANGUS WATSON is an author living in New York. Before becoming a novelist, he was a freelance features writer, chiefly for British national newspapers. Features included looking for Bigfoot in the USA for the Telegraph, diving on the scuppered World War One German fleet at Scapa Flow for the Financial Times and swimming with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands for The Times.

  Angus’s first historical fantasy trilogy is Age of Iron, an epic romantic adventure set at the end of Britain’s Iron Age. He came up with the idea for West of West while driving and hiking though North America’s magnificent countryside and wondering what it was like before the Europeans got there.

  Angus is married to Nicola. They have two young sons, Charlie and Otty, and two cats, Jasmine and Napa.

  You can find him on Twitter at @GusWatson or find his website at www.guswatson.com.

  Find out more about Angus Watson and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  if you enjoyed

  THE LAND YOU NEVER LEAVE

  look out for

  SEVEN BLADES IN BLACK

  by

  Sam Sykes

  Acclaimed author Sam Sykes returns with a brilliant new epic fantasy that introduces an unforgettable outcast magician caught between two warring empires.

  Among humans, none have power like mages. And among mages, none have will like Sal the Cacophony. Once revered, then vagrant, she walked a wasteland scarred by generations of magical warfare.

  The Scar, a land torn between powerful empires, is where rogue mages go to disappear, disgraced soldiers go to die, and where Sal went with a blade, a gun, and a list of names she intended to use both on.

  But vengeance is a flame swift extinguished. Betrayed by those she trusted most, her magic torn from her and awaiting execution, Sal the Cacophony has one last tale to tell before they take her head.

  All she has left is her name, her story, and the weapon she used to carved both.

  Vengeance is its own reward.

  ONE

  Hightower

  Everyone loved a good execution.

  From the walls of Imperial Cathama to the farthest reach of the Revolution, there was no citizen of the Scar who could think of a finer way to spend an afternoon than watching the walls get painted with bits of dissidents. And behind the walls of Revolutionary Hightower that day, there was an electricity in the air felt by every citizen.

  The people gathered in crowds to watch the dirt, still damp from yesterday’s execution, be swept away from the stake. The firing squad sat nearby, polishing their gunpikes and placing bets on who would hit the heart of the poor asshole that got tied up today. Merchants barked nearby, selling everything from refreshment to souvenir so people could remember this day when everyone got off work for a few short hours to see another enemy of the Revolution strung up and gunned down.

  Not like there was a hell of a lot else to do in Hightower lately.

  For her part, Governor-Militant Tretta Stern did her best to ignore all of it: the crowds gathering beneath her window outside the prison, their voices crowing for blood; the wailing children; and the laughing men. She kept her focus on the image in the mirror as she straightened the blue coat of her uniform. Civilians could be excused such craven bloodlust. Officers of the Revolution answered a higher call.

  Her black hair, severely short-cropped and oiled against her head, was befitting of an officer. Jacket cinched tight, trousers pressed and belted, saber at her hip, all without a trace of dust, lint, or rust. And most crucially, the stare that had sent a hundred foes to the grave with a word stared back at her, unflinching.

  One might wonder what the point in getting dressed up for an execution was; after all, it wasn’t like the criminal scum who would be buried in a shallow grave in six hours would give a shit. But being an officer of the Revolution meant upholding certain standards. And Tretta hadn’t earned her post by being slack.

  She took a moment to adjust the medals on her lapel before leaving her quarters. Two guards fired off crisp salutes before straightening their gunpikes and marching exactly three rigid paces behind her. Morning sunlight poured in through the windows as they marched down the stairs to Cadre command. Guards and officers alike called to attention at her passi
ng, raising arms as they saluted. She offered a cursory nod in response, bidding them at ease as she made her way to the farthest door of the room.

  The guard stationed there glanced up. “Governor-Militant,” he acknowledged, saluting.

  “Sergeant,” Tretta replied. “How have you found the prisoner?”

  “Recalcitrant and disrespectful,” he said. “The prisoner began the morning by hurling the assigned porridge at the guard detail, spewed several obscenities, and made forceful suggestions as to the professional and personal conduct of the guard’s mother.” He sniffed, lip curling. “In summation, more or less what we’d expect from a Vagrant.”

  Tretta spared an impressed look. Considering the situation, she had expected much worse.

  She made a gesture. The guard complied, unlocking the massive iron door and pushing it open. She and her escorts descended into the darkness of Hightower’s prison, and the silence of empty cells greeted her.

  Like all Revolutionary outposts, Hightower had been built to accommodate prisoners: Imperium aggressors, counterrevolutionaries, bandit outlaws, and even the occasional Vagrant. Unlike most Revolutionary outposts, Hightower was far away from any battleground in the Scar and didn’t see much use for its cells. Any captive outlaw tended to be executed in fairly short order for crimes against the Revolution, as the civilians tended to become restless without the entertainment.

  In all her time stationed at Hightower, Tretta had visited the prison exactly twice, including today. The first time had been to offer an Imperium spy posing as a bandit clemency in exchange for information. Thirty minutes later, she put him in front of the firing squad. Up until then, he’d been the longest-serving captive in Hightower.

  Thus far, her current prisoner had broken the record by two days.

  The interrogation room lay at the very end of the row of cells, another iron door flanked by two guards. Both fired off a salute as they pulled open the door, its hinges groaning.

  Twenty feet by twenty feet, possessed of nothing more than a table with two chairs and a narrow slit of a window by which to cast a beam of light, the interrogation room was little more than a slightly larger cell with a slightly nicer door. The window, set high up near the ceiling, afforded no ventilation and the room was stifling hot.

  Not that you’d know it from looking at the prisoner.

  A woman—perhaps in her late twenties, Tretta suspected—sat at one end of the table. Dressed in dirty trousers and boots to match, the sleeves and hem of her white shirt cut to bare tattoos racing down her forearms and scars mapping her midsection; about the sort of garish garb you’d expect to find on a Vagrant. Her hair, Imperial white, was shorn roughly on the sides and tied back in an unruly tail. And despite the suffocating heat, she was as calm, serene, and pale as ice.

  There was nothing about this woman that Tretta didn’t despise.

  She didn’t look up as the Governor-Militant entered, paid no heed to the pair of armed men trailing behind her. Her hands, manacled together, rested patiently atop the table. Even when Tretta took a seat across from her, she hardly seemed to notice. The prisoner’s eyes, pale and blue as shallow water, seemed to be looking somewhere else. Her face, thin and sharp and marred by a pair of jagged scars beneath her left eye, seemed unperturbed by her imminent gruesome death.

  That galled Tretta more than she would have liked to admit.

  The Governor-Militant leaned forward, steepling her fingers in front of her, giving the woman a chance to realize what a world of shit she was in. But after a minute of silence, she merely held out one hand. A sheaf of papers appeared there a moment later, thrust forward by one of her guards. She laid it out before her and idly flipped through it.

  “I won’t tell you that you can save yourself,” she said, after a time. “An officer of the Revolution speaks only truths.” She glanced up at the woman, who did not react. “Within six hours, you’ll be executed for crimes against the Glorious Revolution of the Fist and Flame. Nothing you can say can change this fact. You deserve to die for your crimes.” She narrowed her eyes. “And you will.”

  The woman, at last, reacted. Her manacles rattled a little as she reached up and scratched at the scars on her face. Tretta sneered and continued.

  “What you can change,” she said, “is how quickly it goes. The Revolution is not beyond mercy.” She flipped to a page, held it up before her. “In exchange for information regarding the events of the week of Masens eleventh through twentieth, up to and including the massacre of the township of Stark’s Mutter, the destruction of the freehold of Lowstaff, and the disappearance of Revolutionary Low Sergeant Cavric Proud, I am willing to guarantee on behalf of the Cadre a swift and humane death.”

  She set the paper aside, leaned forward. The woman stared just to the left of Tretta’s gaze.

  “A lot of people are dead because of you,” Tretta said. “One of our soldiers is missing because of you. Before these six hours are up and you’re dead and buried, two things are going to happen: I’m going to find out precisely what happened and you’re going to decide whether you go by a single bullet or a hundred blades.” She laid her hands flat on the table. “What you say next will determine how much blood we see today. Think very carefully before you speak.”

  At this, the woman finally looked into Tretta’s eyes. No fear there, she looked calm and placid as ever. And when she spoke, it was weakly.

  “May I,” she said, “have a drink?”

  Tretta blinked. “A drink.”

  The woman smiled softly at her manacled hands. “It’s hot.”

  Tretta narrowed her eyes, but made a gesture all the same. One of her guards slipped out the door, returning a moment later with a jug and a glass. He filled it, slid it over to the prisoner. She took it up and sipped at it, smacked her lips, then looked down at the glass.

  “The fuck is this?” she asked.

  Tretta furrowed her brow. “Water. What else would it be?”

  “I was figuring gin or something,” she said.

  “You asked for water.”

  “I asked for a drink,” the woman shot back. “With all the fuss you’re making about how you’re going to kill me, I thought you’d at least send me out with something decent. Don’t I get a final request?”

  Tretta’s face screwed up in offense. “No.”

  The woman made a pouting face. “I would in Cathama.”

  “You’re not in Cathama,” Tretta snarled in response. “You’re not anywhere near the Imperium and the only imperialist scum within a thousand miles are all buried in graves beside the one I intend to put you in.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been pretty clear on that,” the woman replied, making a flippant gesture. “Crimes against the Revolution and so on. Not that I’d ever call you a liar, madame, but are you sure you’ve got the right girl? There’s plenty of scum in the Scar that must have offended you worse than me.”

  “I am certain.” Tretta seized the papers, flipped to a page toward the front. “Prisoner number fifteen-fifteen-five, alias”—she glared over the paper at the woman—“Sal the Cacophony.”

  Sal’s lip curled into a crooked grin. She made as elegant a bow as one could when manacled and sitting in a chair.

  “Madame.”

  “Real identity unknown, place of birth unknown, hometown unknown,” Tretta continued, reading from the paper. “Professed occupation: bounty hunter.”

  “I prefer ‘manhunter.’ Sounds more dramatic.”

  “Convicted—recently—of murder in twelve townships, arson in three freeholds, unlawful possession of Revolutionary Relics, heresy against Haven, petty larceny—”

  “There was nothing petty about that larceny.” She reached forward. “Let me see that sheet.”

  “—blasphemy, illegal use of magic, kidnapping, extortion, and so on and so on and so fucking on.” Tretta slammed the paper down against the table. “In short, everything I would expect from a common Vagrant. And like a common Vagrant, I expect not a damn soul in the
Scar is going to shed a tear over what puts you in the ground. But what makes you different is that you’ve got the chance to do something vaguely good before you die, which is a sight fucking more than what your fellow scum get before the birds pick their corpses clean.” She clenched her jaw, spat her next words. “So, if you’ve got any decency left to your name, however fake it might be, you’ll tell me what happened. In Stark’s Mutter, in Lowstaff, and to my soldier, Cavric Proud.”

  Sal pursed her lips, regarded Tretta through an ice water stare. She stiffened in her chair and Tretta matched her poise. The two women stared each other down for a moment, as though either of them expected the other to tear out a blade and start swinging.

  As it was, Tretta nearly did just that when Sal finally broke the silence.

  “Have you seen many Vagrants dead, madame?” she asked, unhurried.

  “Many,” Tretta replied, terse.

  “When they died, what did they say?”

  Tretta narrowed her eyes. “Curses, mostly. Cursing the Imperium they served, cursing the luck that sent them to me, cursing me for sending them back to the hell that spawned them.”

  “I guess no one ever knows what their last words will be.” Sal traced a finger across the scars on her cheek, her eyes fixed on some distant spot beyond the walls of the interrogation room. “But I know mine won’t be curses.” She clicked her tongue. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, madame, about Lowstaff, about Cavric, everything. I’ll give you everything you want and you can put a bullet in my head or cut it off or have me torn apart by birds. I won’t protest. All I ask is one thing.”

  Tretta tensed and reached for her saber as Sal leaned across the table. And a grin as long and sharp as a blade etched itself across her face.

  “Remember my last words.”

  Tretta didn’t achieve her rank by indulging prisoners, let alone ones as vile as a Vagrant. She achieved it through the support and respect of the men and women who saluted her every morning. And she didn’t get that by letting their fates go unknown.