by Tim Lebbon
As he watched, one rose seemed to bow down towards the ground, stem bending almost double. A pearl of blood dropped from it – shockingly red – and then the rose sprang up again, as if relieved of a great weight.
“Like the land’s bleeding,” Leeza said. For once, the bravado had slipped from her voice.
“This place shouldn’t be here,” Rufiere said.
Barr did not stop walking, but he said nothing. Jakk noted that he stayed in the lead so none of them could see his face.
*
“You told me you fought in the War!” Bindy says.
“And I did!” Jakk says. “Just not against the Krotes.” He is moving quickly around their small home, hurrying to gather what they will need while trying not to startle Romana. She did not see him kill Barr, and for that he is grateful. But soon they will have to go outside.
“I don’t understand,” Bindy says.
Jakk gathers up a handful of water skins and slings them over his shoulder. They will need filling. They have one horse, an old nag, but she will have to do, she can carry Romana and some of what they need, and when they’re far enough away he will send them—
“Jakk!” Bindy almost shouts, and he does not like the edge of panic in her voice. “Jakk, I just saw what happened. You owe me an explanation, don’t you think?”
He turns to his wife and moves so that he is between her and Romana. Clasping Bindy’s shoulders he leans in close, touching foreheads, smelling the fear on her breath. He hopes it is not fear of him. “We’re in danger,” he whispers. “For now that’s all you need to know. We can’t just wait. We need to leave here, and I’ll tell you everything as we go.”
“Leave?”
“Go far away.”
“This is our home.”
Jakk shakes his head. “Not any more. Maybe later we can come back again…” He steps back and shakes his head, panic threatening to undo him.
“Daddy?” Romana says quietly, and her plea does not help him.
“Roma, I need you to go to your room and get some clothes,” Jakk says. “Not too much, because the old horse has to carry everything.”
“Where are we going?” she asks, eyes wide. She has never left the forest before.
“For a walk,” Jakk says. “An adventure! Like the stories I tell you at night about the Voyagers.”
“We’re going on a Voyage?” she asks, anxiety changing instantly to excitement.
“Yes,” he says. “We’re going exploring.”
“What will we find?”
I’m not sure, he thinks. Maybe nothing. Maybe we’ll never even get away from the forest. “Somewhere else,” he says.
As if content with Jakk’s obscure answer Romana rushes into her room, and he hears her rummaging around in there, gathering things for their voyage of discovery.
“We’re running?” Bindy asks.
“Yes,” he says quietly.
“From what happened to him?” She nods at the closed door as though Barr is standing there.
Jakk nods. Neither of them want to mention that it was he who had finally killed Barr. He was dying anyway, he thinks, but it’s only something to say to Bindy. He realises that he feels no remorse at all. That is hardly a surprise.
Bindy stares at him for a beat, and her strength is apparent in her stance. He really doesn’t think he could have lived with a weak person for so long. She lifts him up when he’s low, guides him through dark times, and when he has nightmares she is always there for him when he sweats himself awake. She has never asked about those nightmares. He knows that she assumes they’re leftovers from the Cataclysmic War, and now that she has heard his own conflict was apart from that great battle there’s confusion in her eyes.
“Tell me I don’t have to be scared of you, Jakk.”
His heart almost breaks. “Bindy …”
She sighs and closes her eyes. When she looks at him again she smiles. “But as soon as we’re away, you need to talk,” she says.
Jakk nods because he finds he cannot speak. Tears threaten, and out of everything that should inspire them – fear of what had come, the pain of past times dredged up again, the blood roses he had smelled upon returning from his hunt – it’s shame that brings them on. He has lied to Bindy for so long, and now he feels like a traitor.
“Everything,” he says. “You’ll hear it all.”
*
They are ready to leave by mid-afternoon. Bindy keeps their daughter in the house packing their saddle bags while Jakk drags Barr’s body between the trees. He does not attempt to bury him, nor to chant his wraith down, because this mercenary deserves neither. Jakk hopes that his spirit finds only torture in death, a fitting punishment for everything Barr had done in life, and as he walks back into the clearing he feels a presence behind him, desperate and lost. That almost makes him smile.
As they leave Bindy is sobbing quietly. Jakk chats to Romana to cover the sound of her mother’s tears. His daughter looks at him with a frown on her innocent little face, and he knows that she’s wondering about the weapons he carries. She has seen him bearing the bow and quiver a thousand times before when he goes hunting, but everything else is strange to her. The sword on his belt, the knives, the throwing stars fixed to the straps across his chest, the slideshock on his arm, the crossbow hanging from the old horse’s saddle … she has never seen them before. And in truth, Jakk has not taken good care of them at all. The stars are dulled, the sword speckled with rust, and he is worried that the carefully balanced slideshock mechanism has seized completely. But his first priority is to leave. If Barr knew how to find him, then it will as well. That machine. That thing.
He’s surprised only that it has taken so long.
*
They walk all afternoon and into the evening, and by the time dusk falls they are at the western boundary of Pengulfin Woods, staring out at the beginnings of the Cantrass Plains. Jakk decides to camp one more night in the shelter of trees, because that is a place the three of them know. He wishes he had questioned Barr some more, but anything the dying man said could have been lies. All of it could have been lies. But there were the blood roses blooming across his stomach, and there was no way could he have lied about those. Jakk had only ever seen them down in that folded valley, smelled them there, and now that they bloomed again and processed Noreelan air …
There was no escape. He was fooling himself. He had known that from the moment he saw Barr, dying on the ground outside his home. But what else could he do but run?
The machines were dead. They littered the landscape like ruined buildings of the Noreelans’ ancestors, rotting, crumbling, rusting, fading away into the land’s bloody history even while the present bled into the damned future. Perhaps his only hope lay in the possibility that whatever had come for them would yield to the same fate.
*
By the time they entered the village it seemed like a ghost town. They had seen some movement on their way along the road, but now it looked abandoned, as if every inhabitant had fled or vanished. But it was obvious from what was left behind that the villagers were all hiding.
Several chimneys still gushed smoked. A door swayed open and closed in the slight breeze, and one building a hundred steps into the village was fronted by a makeshift table, spices and other wares laid out for prospective buyers to view. A wolf lay underneath, still tied to one table leg by a length of rope. It raised its head as they approached, growled softly and then went back to sleep.
“Something strange here,” Leeza said.
“You mean besides everyone hiding from us?” Rufiere asked.
Barr tried to laugh, but it came out like a gasp. “Our reputation precedes us,” he said.
Jakk shook his head. “Leeza’s right. Why should they fear us? We’re all tooled up, true, but lots of people carry weapons nowadays.”
“That woman,” Rufiere said. “That old man Leeza killed.”
“I killed him because he ran,” she said.
“I don�
��t care,” Rufiere continued. “Didn’t you all notice how surprised they were to see us?”
“They’re not used to visitors,” Jakk said. It was obvious. The village had the feel of a place never visited and rarely left. There were no posts for tying horses, and no sign that there were any stables or grazing fields nearby. The few shops they could see displayed fruit and vegetables, leather good and metal wares that could all have been manufactured locally. And there were no signs. What village or town ran itself without having to point the way? If there was a tavern it went unadvertised, the shops were obvious only from their window displays, and several other buildings had blank facades which could have hidden anything inside.
“You said this valley shouldn’t be here,” Jakk said to Rufiere. “I believed you from the start.”
“Well it is here, and we’re here, and I’m not leaving until I find something worth taking with me.” Barr walked on ahead, still not turning around to look at them.
He’s scared, Jakk thought. He’s actually scared, and for him that’ll be a first. He lost it a year ago, during that massacre in the Terrenian marshes, and since then he’s been a blank. But now …
“I’m scared,” Rufiere said.
“Then leave,” Barr said from ahead. “A three way share suits me better,”
There was a loud crash from somewhere across the village, the source of the sound hidden from view by the buildings and huge trees.
The four mercenaries moved apart and drew their weapons, instincts honed in years of fighting together taking over. Barr and Leeza hurried for the shelter of a low house to their left. Jakk and Rufiere went right, passing beneath a stone arch to a tumbled down wall.
The crashing noise came again, followed by a metallic snap, and then both sounds yet again. The regularity could have been footsteps.
“That sounds like a big machine,” Rufiere said.
Jakk sheathed his sword and strung an arrow in his bow. He could see along the street from here, and if someone or something emerged from between buildings he’d have time to shoot them before they reached him.
“Maybe they’re trying to scare us away?” Jakk asked. He looked at Rufiere but the tall soldier was concentrating hard on the sounds.
“It’s not coming closer,” he said at last. After three more repeats, the noises stopped.
Barr and Leeza broke cover and dashed along the street. There were thirty places where an enemy may be hiding, and it was nowhere near safe. But Barr thought he was indestructible.
Jakk ran back through the stone arch and along the opposite side of the road, and he heard Rufiere behind him.
No windows burst open to unleash a hail of arrows. No trip-wire sprang from the dust to slice into their shins. There was no rushing attack from the shadows between buildings or beneath trees, and no sense that any attack was about to come. The inhabitants of this place were well and truly hidden away.
Perhaps when they reached the centre of the village the trap would spring.
Jakk glanced up at one of the huge trees as they ran through its shadow. It was adorned with brightly coloured streamers, each of them ending just above head height, and there were climbing slats fixed into its wide trunk. He paused and scanned the branches for shadows that should not be there, but the tree appeared empty.
Barr whistled from along the street and waved Jakk and Rufiere on. He pointed to his eyes, then nodded around the corner of the building he leaned against. Found something.
When Jakk reached Barr and Leeza, they were breathing heavily from their dash.
“Something there,” Barr said. “Look. The building behind that old man. Something there, and that’s what we heard, the whole place being locked up.”
Jakk knelt down and peered around Barr’s legs, keeping his bow at the ready.
They were at the centre of the village, and it was marked by a large circular area occupied by only one building. The structure was no higher than the tallest man, and consisted of an inverted bowl shape with openings spaced at regular intervals around its sloping wall. These openings – windows or doors – were covered with heavy timber shutters, and across each shutter were locked two thick iron bars. An old man stood before the building, watching the mercenaries with a blank expression. He bore no weapons, and his simple clothing hung on his gaunt frame. Jakk thought he could have been probably the oldest man he had ever seen.
The area all around the building was spotted with clumps of the blood roses. The ground beneath each bloom was dark and damp.
“Could be a trap,” Rufiere said.
“No,” Barr said. “There’s something in there they don’t want us to see, and that only makes me want to see it more.” He stepped fully from behind the building and started walking.
The old man suddenly looked terrified. There was something about duty and responsibility in his stance, but as his nervous gaze switched from Barr, to Jakk, to Leeza and Rufiere, it was obvious that he was a reluctant guardian.
Barr paused six steps from the old man and wielded his sword.
Jakk and the other formed a semi-circle behind Barr, blocking the man’s escape. Jakk offered a small smile and tried to exude calmness, but the villager was shaking now, and he looked at Barr as the obvious leader of their group.
“What’s in there?” Barr asked, nodding at the building.
The old man frowned, and for a beat Jakk thought he did not understand their language. This place shouldn’t be here, Rufiere had said, and Jakk felt a chill. If this man did not speak Noreelan then they were truly somewhere they should have never found.
And then the man spoke. “Who … who are you?”
“Ask me another question and I’ll kill you,” Barr said. He lifted his grisly necklace and used the dead woman’s still-tacky finger to point at the man. “You want a place on here?”
The man’s eyes went wide and he shook his head.
“So, what’s in there?”
“I can’t say. I can’t tell you. It’s … forbidden. For anyone like you. Anyone from beyond the folded valley.”
“Folded valley,” Rufiere echoed. He was still holding his short spear, but in his other hand the supposed Book of Ways hung open, his thumb stroking the page.
The old man turned to Rufiere. “You understand.”
Barr stepped forward and spiked the man’s shoulder with his sword. His rough shirt parted and darkened with blood, and the old man cried out.
The village seemed to gasp. We’re being watched, Jakk thought. Rufiere glanced at him and frowned, obviously sensing the same.
“Don’t piss with us, old man,” Leeza said, perhaps trying to save him from Barr’s full fury. She stepped forward and shoved him to the ground, standing on his wounded shoulder. “Folded valleys can stay folded, far as I care, but there’s something in there—”
“It should have stayed folded,” the man said. He was grimacing in pain, but his confusion seemed more intense.
“If you have a key for those locks, best take it out and hand it to me right now.”
The village sighed this time, a gentle, long exhalation. Jakk looked around and saw columns of steam rising from a dozen places around them, issuing from tall metal tubes that protruded above rooftops. He had seen features like this before, and they always belonged to machines.
“You have machines living in the valley,” Jakk said.
“Of course,” the man said. Leeza took her foot from his shoulder and let him sit up.
“Why? How? Machines are dead.”
The man shook his head sadly, looking down at the ground between his legs. He looked wretched.
Jakk kicked at a blood rose growing close by, setting it swaying on its thin but strong stem. He watched the man, whose head rose slightly to see what he was doing. The man now looked angry.
“What are these?” Jakk asked.
“I can’t tell you,” the man said, but his expression said, I won’t tell you.
Barr shouted an unintelligible roar of ra
ge and kicked out at the man’s head. The crunching sound was sickening and final, and the man collapsed to the ground, twitching. His eyes rolled up in his head and he started foaming at the mouth.
Jakk looked away from the dying man and crushed one of the blooms down beneath his boot, pressing slowly. It burst onto the ground and spurted bright red sap across the dust.
The village growled. The sound came from all around them, a low, meaty rumble that threatened the air they breathed.
The tall metal columns gushed steam again, the outpourings more intense this time, pressure higher.
“What’s that?” Rufiere said. His voice shook.
Jakk looked up from the crushed flower and across at Barr, and he realised then that the difference between them was simply a matter of control. They had both killed many people, and the faces of those he had killed – in a fight, and in cold blood – had started to haunt Jakk’s dreams. But he knew when to stop, and that time had come and gone. Barr knew as well, but he could not find any way to stop. Perhaps it was madness, and maybe that in itself was a defence, but he would keep fighting and killing until he was killed himself.
Barr approached the building. “Doesn’t matter what that is,” he said. “What matters is here.”
“I think we should leave,” Jakk said. “Barr, I don’t think there’s anything here for us. It’s a folded valley.”
“And what the fuck is a folded valley?” Leeza asked.
Jakk lifted his arms and gestured around them. “I really don’t think we want to find out.”
Leeza’s knuckles tightened on her sword. They had fought long and hard together, and this was the first time Jakk had felt threatened by one of his own.
He shook his head.
Barr struck at the iron bars locked across a wooden shutter. Sparks flew, but nothing seemed to shift. The locks were strong.