by D. P. Prior
“Come on, mate.” Sandau slapped her behind. “Buns of steel. I’ll spot you.”
“Last thing I need’s you behind me, you perv. Shog off and train yourself. You’re starting to get a gut.”
Sandau lifted his shirt to check, and one or two of the lads chuckled.
“Didn’t hear you complaining last night,” Sandau said.
Rhiannon closed her eyes; sucked on her lip. She’d been pissed again. Pissed and lonely. She was always lonely. “Yeah, well they say booze addles your brain. Shog knows what I was thinking.”
She ducked under the bar and lifted off.
Someone whistled from behind as she dropped into a full squat. She couldn’t help smiling. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. She had the vague sense of a group gathering behind her. Must’ve been rarer than she thought, seeing someone use the squat rack the way it was intended.
“You guys want coaching?” she said at the top of a rep.
“No, we’re fine just observing,” Sandau said.
“That’s right, darling. Keep up the good work.”
Who was that? Dayn Barklin?—Sergeant Barklin now. Tosser. Another bad memory.
Every rep was greeted by clapping and whistling. Her thighs caught fire after six, but she was just getting started. Three more and she paused for breath, sucking in gulps of air and coughing. Groans sounded from behind her, but they turned to cheers when she squeezed out two more reps, breath ragged, arse so tight it felt ready to split. One more rep, and this time she almost got stuck at the bottom. Sandau stepped in, but she swore at him then forced the weight up with a roar.
The onlookers cheered and applauded as she lurched forward and ditched the bar onto the gun rack. Tensing her abs, she raised her vest to check her definition in the mirror.
More applause and cheering.
“Do you meatheads do anything here apart from leer?” She grabbed a towel from Puny Pete, mopped her brow, and dabbed at the rivulets of sweat running down her chest.
“Want some help with that?” Sandau said.
Whoops of laughter.
“Play with your own.” She glanced at his swollen pecs and tossed the towel back.
Pete surreptitiously raised it to his face but dropped his hand when he saw her noticing.
“Who’s for a run?” Rhiannon thrust her hands on her hips and looked for an answer.
“Nah, it’s arm day.”
“Shog that. It’s breakfast time.”
“You don’t wanna be running. Loses mass.”
“Wow,” Rhiannon said. “Britannia’s finest. Hagalle doesn’t stand a chance.” She gave them her practiced grin, full of teeth, and plucked the half-smoked cigar from behind her ear.
“Catch you later, Lieutenant.” Sandau saluted.
“Later, sailor boy.”
Outside, it was raining. Again. Rhiannon turned back to the shelter of the porch to light the stub. Someone was waiting in the shadows. The no-neck she’d dissed at the squat rack.
“Hey.” She forced a smile, as if to say, “No harm done.”
His fist crunched into her jaw, pitched her to the ground. Cold damp soaked into her pants. A puddle. He’d dumped her in a shogging puddle.
She pushed herself upright with one hand, rubbed her chin with the other. She grimaced, rolled her jaw to make sure it wasn’t broken. Her cigar floated in front of her like a… like a smoldering floater. It gave her something to focus on, remind herself how to act with this kind.
She pushed herself to her feet, shaking the grogginess out of her head. “Never hit me in the mouth.” Never hit her at all. Never even touch her.
“Oh, I got more where that came from, bitch.” No-Neck grabbed her shirt and pulled her into his snarling face.
“Shog, your breath stinks.” Rhiannon fanned the air beneath her nose.
“Back off, big man!” Sandau growled from the doorway.
The others were crowding behind him. They’d be loving this. They’d be expecting a whole lot more from Rhiannon, though, if she weren’t to lose face.
“Stay out of this, Sandau!” No-Neck’s spittle sprayed in her face.
“Hey, we’re fine, lads. Me and my friend just want to dance.” Rhiannon flashed a smile at No-Neck. “Isn’t that right, mate?”
She crashed her head into his nose, splitting it like a melon. Blood spurted in a high arc. Some got on her lips, and she spat it right back in his face. No-Neck let go her shirt to cup his nose in his hands.
“You broke my frigging nose!”
Rhiannon patted his head. “Ah, sorry, mate.”
She kicked him in the knee. There was a sickening crack, and No-Neck dropped face-first into the puddle. Blood from his nose swirled into the water, turning it pink. Made her think of Shadrak’s eyes. Made her think of what she’d seen him do on more than one occasion, of what he’d have done to this scut, too. Every muscle in her body clenched. She lifted her foot to stomp on the back of his head. It’s what Shader would have done, wasn’t it? How he’d acted with Gaston outside the Templum of the Knot.
“Ranny!” Sandau said.
Her boot came down—gently, in the puddle.
No. Shadrak, maybe. Almost certainly. But not Shader. And especially not nowadays, what she’d heard.
“Where’s my frigging cigar?’ Rhiannon patted herself down, and then she remembered the floater. “Shogging great!’ She kicked No-Neck in the ribs, and he screamed.
Sandau clapped a hand on her shoulder. She nearly hit him, too.
“What is it with you, Ranny? Couldn’t you just give him a warning? Poor bastard will be out of action for months.”
“He had it coming.”
Clipped footfalls came toward them; stopped just shy of the puddle.
“That’s it, Kwane. You’ve gone too far this time.” The words were quietly spoken through clenched teeth. Always did that, Colonel Stoner: spoke like a ventriloquist. A bad one, with a Great Western accent. The drawling southern kind that made him sound like he was chewing tobacco, even though Stoner was the last person she’d expect to do that.
“I’ve had it with you, Kwane. How the heck am I supposed to kick Imperial butt with you beating up on my men?”
“I guess you’re just gonna have ta teach them sarm manners, sir.”
“Are you mockin’ me, Lieutenant?”
“If I am, what are you going to do about it? Report me to the Fencibles? Maybe they’ll stop me volunteering.”
Rhiannon tugged her faded green jacket from her bag and shrugged it on. She winked and grinned at Stoner’s obvious disapproval. “What, no way to treat a uniform, Colonel? Maybe your wife could press it for me. When she’s sober.”
Stoner reddened, and the tic under his right eye started on cue.
Sandau stepped between them. “Carson started it, sir. We all saw.”
“When I want your o-pin-ion, Private, I’ll ask for it.”
“Sir!”
“If you take me in, you’ll have to take him, too.” Rhiannon prodded Carson with her foot. He rolled to his back, grimacing and moaning.
“She frigging broke my leg, sir. And my nose.”
“Get him out o’ here,” Stoner said.
Four of the gym rats helped Carson up and stood there like the gormless twats they were.
“What the heck are ya waitin’ for? The infirmary. Now.”
“Sir!” they shouted in unison, lifting Carson and carrying him off through the rain.
Stoner entered the puddle and glared down at Rhiannon. “I don’t wanna see you on army property again. Got it?”
“Where am I supposed to train?”
“Ask someone who cares. Head on back home to the shanty town like a good girl. Maybe you could get Reynolds to put in a gym for the Fencibles. Shogging disgrace, bunch of lard-arsed layabouts.” He ran his eyes over Rhiannon; apparently decided there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her. “And women,” he added, as if that were the bigger insult.
Rhiannon bit her lip to stop the tears coming. Tears of anger. Anything else was just weak. She turned her back on Stoner to stop him from seeing.
“Shog you, Stoner. Shog the lot of you.”
She walked away. When Stoner called her back, told her he hadn’t finished, she stuck a finger up over her shoulder without breaking her stride.
By the time she was out of sight, she broke into a jog, deliberately aiming for the puddles and calling out curses. Water soaked into her pants legs. Its coldness spurred her anger, but it did nothing for the rest of the emotions bubbling through her veins, seeking release. Not like blood. The scars on her arms itched at the thought. Not like blood released by Callixus’s black blade. She could feel it, drawing her like a magnet. Calling her home.
“Ah, shog it!” she said. Her bag. She’d left her bag on the ground. She couldn’t go back for it; not without blubbing.
Picking up her pace, she ran along the Terminus toward the sea. The road was busy with carriages—horse-drawn two-wheelers of Aeterna-tech design. Suddenly, everybody needed them. Apparently, people couldn’t walk anymore. At least not in Hallow.
Liquefying mounds of dung spattered the road, rain falling off them in thin brown streams. Another result of innovation. The place stank to high Araboth. Apparently, nobody could clean shit anymore, either.
Rhiannon dodged in and out of the traffic then made a beeline for the pier. They still called it the pier, but in reality it was a mass of twisted rusty metal thrusting into the waves. Once, it had served a purpose. Now it was just an eyesore, left there to remind folk of the greatness of the Ancients. What was it about antiquity that people thought was so good? Since the Templum’s exodus from the conquered territories of Nousia, more of the stored wisdom of the Ancients had been released, but what good had come of it? Besides piles of horse shit and a gym she could no longer use.
Even the Sahulians weren’t immune. The deeper they pressed into Templum lands, the more Ancient-tech they appropriated. She’d heard Hagalle now sat on his arse staring at moving pictures on a screen. Nobody saw him, unless they were summoned. Knowing Hagalle, he’d turned the Antiquus Dierum at the heart of Aeterna into a hideaway with bolts and padlocks on the doors. The wheels of the New Empire turned well enough without him having to do anything except hunker down in his wolf’s lair. She could imagine him fretting, blaming, cursing, probably afraid of the frescoes all around him; afraid to move. Just sitting there watching his moving pictures. Shader had a blade to his throat once, back in Sahul. Pity he didn’t use it.
She hit the promenade, skipped down some steps, and leapt to the shingle. Stones crunched as she slid and pounded her way eastward, calves burning, heart thudding. The groynes leading out to sea were slick with seaweed. She vaulted the first, hurdled another, then plowed on across the beach. If there was really an Abyss—and she’d seen enough to convince her there was—it was bound to be like this: slipping backward with every step; pressing on with superhuman effort but getting nowhere.
She clambered over another groyne and clawed her way to the next with long grueling strides. When she reached it, she sat breathing heavily for a minute before flopping onto her back. She opened her mouth to the rain, tried to imagine it was beer.
Ain, she hated Hallow. Hated Britannia, actually. The last bastion of Nousia: a dark and dismal island that was about as north as you could get without falling off the edge of the world. If Shader had slit Hagalle’s throat when he’d had the chance, she could have stayed in Sahul. At least it was hot there; and it hardly ever rained.
She stopped herself from thinking any more than that. She’d lost too much there: her folks, her friends. Shader, even, although that was ancient history. And Sammy, of course, but she couldn’t think about him without her shield of anger. How else could she deal with his rejection? Her Sammy. Her so-called brother.
She wrenched her thoughts back to her scut-infested present, looked up at the scudding clouds and pea-soup sky. Say one thing for Britannia, though: it was such a hole that Hagalle was halfhearted about its conquest. If the survivors of Nousia were safe anywhere, it was here.
Rhiannon rubbed her forehead, screwed her face up, and cringed. She’d done it again: steeped big sins upon little. It was the same every day: one cross word, one lazy thought, and then she was slipping and sliding down a scree bank into the maw of the Demiurgos. How many times had she betrayed Nous? Could she even call herself a Nousian any longer?
“Sorry,” she prayed out loud. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
She inhaled deeply, held her breath, and then let out a sigh. It was next to impossible being holy in Britannia. Especially surrounded by soldiers. And especially Great Westerners. Arrogant shits.
She winced at that, and was about to say “sorry” again, but what would be the point? The damage had already been done. The day couldn’t get any worse. Nous couldn’t be any more disappointed with her. She might just as well write this one off and try again tomorrow.
Least she was being truthful. About Westies, that was. Maybe they weren’t shits, but they were bloody arrogant. They had a long history of it, stretching way back to the Ancients. Even the few who managed to escape Hagalle’s forces were not quite humbled. People like Colonel Stoner. Sandau was little better. He was only friendlier because he wanted something from her. It was just her luck Hallow was full of Westies, so much so that she’d even started talking like them.
Maybe Shader would have some good news. Londinium had to be better than this. Maybe the Elect were taking women now. She allowed herself a little laugh at that. If they did, which they wouldn’t, they’d not want her. The choices she’d made, the things she’d succumbed to, ensured even the Templum of the Knot wouldn’t have her back now. Assuming there still was a Templum of the Knot, and that Hagalle hadn’t burned it to the ground and murdered everyone within. There was only one person to thank for the crap turns her life had taken: Aristo-shogging-deus.
Well, two, maybe. He hadn’t exactly forced himself on her. Not like Gaston. And Nous had brought some good out of it, hadn’t he?
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Rhiannon, she thought. A daughter she couldn’t bare to be with. A little girl who spent more time with her minders than her mother. Poor Saphra, as unwanted as Rhiannon was by Sammy.
She tried to tell herself it wasn’t true, that she aimed to fix it as soon as the war was over. But did she? Did she really? And a war like this, that spanned the whole known world, wasn’t likely to be over for a very long time.
She rolled from the groyne and trudged to the promenade. The rain had slowed to a gentle patter, but the sea breeze still sprayed its saltiness in her face.
She’d need to wash her hair before he came. She didn’t want Shader seeing her like this. That was one thing you could say for Aeterna-tech: at least there were showers now. Public ones, for people like her with no real homes of their own, and she’d have to queue for ages. Not only that, but she’d have to bare the marks she’d given herself with Callixus’s black sword; endure the looks of disgust and fear. It’s why she seldom went. A bucket of seawater and an overused sponge sufficed for the most part, and rainwater did wonders for her hair. But not today. Today she had to do better. Today, she needed to be at her best. The way he remembered her. Anything less would cause him pain, and that was the last thing she wanted.
OLD FRIENDS
Rhiannon walked home from the shower, hair bundled up in a towel.
The rain stopped by the time she reached the shanty town that spread around the harbor like a scab. Mud-splattered, cold, and thoroughly miserable, she pushed her way inside the corrugated hut she called home. It was one of many on the site, which itself was one among many refugee villages in the South of Britannia.
The Britannish may have survived the first onslaught, but after the Battle of Anderida, the evacuees from the Great West, from Gallia, Latia, and the other territories, had nowhere to go. Ipsissimus Silvanus had swept aside the government (a bunch of feudal warmong
ers lacking the will to fight) and promised relief for the refugees.
Of course, there were excuses, the need for defense not the least of them. All the country’s resources were channeled into Aeterna-tech and the reinforcement of the Martello Line of heavily-armed towers along the coast. Rhiannon didn’t disagree, but surely more could be done for the people stranded here. What was the point of an island fortress, if those it protected were no better off than prisoners?
She had made the most of it. She even liked the rough-and-ready hut she’d been provided with. It wasn’t so different to life at the Templum of the Knot. A little less sanitary, maybe. The room—there was only one—was partitioned by a thick and dusty drape. The door opened onto a living space-come kitchen: a chipped and wobbly round table, a couple of crates to sit on, a bucket, and some cast iron pans.
She snatched a bottle from the table, took a swig, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The chill receded somewhat.
Leaving the bottle open on the table, she slipped through the drape and fell onto the pallet bed, pulling off her boots, unfastening her pants. She lay there for a while, staring at the cobwebs on the ceiling, letting thoughts and images gambol across her mind. The same ones as always, so she didn’t need to pay them much mind: Gaston, Sammy, Shader; the bloodbath atop the Homestead, still as fresh to her as if it happened only yesterday. And in among the memories, she saw Callixus’s sword, thrust into an island of tar that protruded like a pustule from a black river. It was always the central image, around which the others danced like Dreamers about a totem tree. It tugged at her, called to her in wordless whispers, brought out beads of sweat all over her skin. She grimaced and wrenched herself away from the vision. Something snapped—something almost tangible, like a thread of spider web pitched behind her eyes, and the earthly squalor of the hut settled back around her with all its fragile comfort.
She stood to pull off her pants, and flicked them with her foot across the floor. Yawning, she rolled her shirt over her head, slung it on the pile, and ran her hands over her belly.