by Col Buchanan
Through his pain, the thought brought a wry smile to Ash’s lips.
‘Try not to smile until the ink has dried, will you?’ admonished the monk. ‘Now. Let me hear your best Alhazii accent.’
‘I was born in the razee of Fe’nada oasis, how is that, Blessed Brother?’
Meer laughed and clapped Ash’s shoulder.
‘I hope that was a joke, my friend. Otherwise I’m going to insist that no one speaks during our entire stay, save for me.’
At least Ash’s sight had improved a little over the course of the afternoon. Ahead, the peaks were close enough that he could see them better now. They seemed wreathed in dark rain clouds that hid any sign of the Isles of Sky, or Mashuppa, or whatever the city of the Anwi was called. Ash could even see the line rising up out of the clouds that Meer had called the Sky Bridge, though it remained faint even as they grew nearer.
Downwards the Falcon swooped, approaching the easternmost flanks of the range, where a silver river wound its way towards the coast. A town spread across the foot of the slope, where the mountain torrent first slowed and widened, a settlement obscured by mist and smoke.
‘Guallo Town,’ Meer declared. ‘Guallo meaning foreigner in the Anwi tongue. It’s used as an insult. The Alhazii traders occupy the town. For most purposes it’s as far as they can venture, and as far as we can go ourselves.’
‘You mean we won’t be seeing the city?’ exclaimed Aléas.
‘Not possible, I’m afraid. I’ll be slipping in alone once I send word to my contacts. The crew can run repairs during your stay in the port. Something that keeps you all on board and the ship inactive until my return.’
Disappointment flushed red across Aléas’s expression.
‘So this is it?’ asked Cole into the wind. ‘Where all the exotics in the world come from? All the black powder?’
‘Yes, this is the place. The Crucible priests create the exotics up in the city, amidst great secrecy.’
‘We won’t be seeing the city at all?’ complained Aléas once more.
This time Meer pretended not to hear him, and turned his voice back to Ash.
‘If we’re lucky, the Alhazii should leave the ship in peace once they see our Guild port pass.’
‘Another fake?’ asked Ash.
‘Of course.’
‘They say such a thing is impossible.’
‘Not if you’re friends with a Dreamer.’
Ash nodded, suitably impressed, and the monk tutted and lifted his brush away until he was still again. ‘Let us hope that it works, then.’
‘If it doesn’t, we’re going to have an awful lot of explaining to do. Now hold still will you? This is a tricky bit.’
*
Surrounded by dense jungle, Guallo Town was a settlement of wooden warehouses and buildings of pale stone, flanked on the northern side by the clear-running Mashuppa river winding its way out to sea, and on the eastern side by a canal which led to an area of docks where large sea-going trading ships were moored.
The Falcon circled slowly over a high white wall that surrounded the entirety of the settlement. Tall, skinny watchtowers stood around the wall and along the waterways. Within them, figures surveyed the skies as though for incoming skyships, though Meer said otherwise.
‘It’s the start of the rainy season,’ he explained. ‘They’ll be watching closely for birds.’
They all stared at him.
‘Big birds,’ he explained.
No one could tell if he was joking.
Over it all rose the mountains, climbing in steep green terraces into the clouds. A white road could be seen winding its way upwards from a building in the wall.
Down came the Falcon into an open field that was the town’s busy skyport, where windsocks blew and other skyships were tethered. With a bump her flat bottom slid along the ground and crewmen clambered over the side to tie down the ship.
Few heads turned to pay attention to the new arrival in the field, just another vessel amongst many. After some moments the hull door swung open on the starboard side, to reveal Ash and the others of their party gathered there in the hold around Meer, all of them wearing their loose burnooses.
‘Here we are then,’ said the monk at the top of the ramp being lowered to the ground, squinting out at the fierce sunlight. Meer stood next to a zel that was loaded down with the skins of Royal Milk they had gained from the Hush, breathing in the pungent scents of the surrounding jungle. ‘Here we are.’
For a moment Ash regretted not being able to go with him, but the monk had been insistent that he go alone. Meer would have to lie low for a while in Gaullo Town itself, before his Anwi contacts could smuggle him into the city.
Reluctantly, Ash handed the man the urn containing his apprentice’s ashes, which he had brought all this way with him at Meer’s insistence. The ashes were a physical trace of Nico, supposedly to be used during the process of restoring him to life.
‘Look after him,’ Ash said, not letting go just yet.
‘Of course,’ Meer replied with heart, and gently plucked the urn from his grip. ‘Remember now, there’s no telling how long I will be gone. I’ll send for you if I can. At the very least, I’ll let you know how the whole process is going with your boy up there.’
‘Do that. As soon as you can.’
‘Well, wish me luck,’ Meer said with an optimistic smile and a wave of the leather wallet that was their fake Guild port pass, then he tugged the zel to follow him down the ramp.
‘Luck,’ offered Aléas.
Ash gazed after the hedgemonk with narrowed eyes, his chest rising and falling fast.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
High Times, Low Times
In a sheltered clearing of the Windrush, Shard was relieved when the party stopped to make camp in the falling darkness, where they picketed their zels and built a large fire to warm their chilled bones, weary faces shining in the light of the rising flames.
With snow tumbling down they huddled around the fire beneath sheets of canvas tied between the trees, hands and feet extended to catch the welcome heat of the flames. They ate what dried meals they carried in their bags, and brewed pots of chee so they wouldn’t have to stomach the near-frozen water from their flasks.
Armed with their mugs of steaming, soothing chee, the rangers played a round of sticks and bones with their gloved hands and the two losers took first watch around the perimeter of the camp, skulking off into the undergrowth to climb into some nearby trees. Beneath their canvas shelters, the remaining rangers broke out their supplies of hazii weed and started passing sticks amongst themselves, joking and cajoling in a rising mood of smoky banter. None mentioned the dead companion they had left behind, though they placed a mug of chee close to the fire as though he would be wanting it, and there was a sense that their jovial spirits were an effort to honour the fallen man known as the Loaf, a kind of wake in typically Mercian fashion, a celebration of life more than a sombre reflection on his passing.
Shard munched on one of Coya’s hazii cakes and relaxed into the easy mood of the camp, glad to be off the hard saddle of the zel at last. It was easier to ignore the whispers in her mind in this cosy circle of life, those breathless voices that had been speaking to her all day in words too soft to properly discern, an effect of the worm juice no doubt, hallucinations of the forest speaking to her, just as her father always claimed forests spoke to those open enough to listen. Now it was human chatter that filled her ears and mind, and she basked in it as much as in the heat from the fire.
By her side, Coya lay back against a saddle and toasted his stockinged feet upon the hot rocks surrounding the blaze. His eyes were glazed as he chewed on another one of his hazii cakes, watching the rangers with keen interest.
‘You still soaring?’ he asked with his mouth full.
‘A little,’ she said with a shiver, though she had mixed some tannis with her chee to help subdue her mind, and the weed was helping too.
She peered at him thro
ugh the glimmering firelight.
‘Something on your mind?’
‘Hah. Many things. So many I’m having to make an inventory of them in my head.’
‘And what’s at the top of the list?’
Coya chewed that one over. ‘Actually, it isn’t a list. I imagine shelves of wooden boxes in my mind, each painted with a number, or sometimes a picture. And inside I place images of whatever I need to hold in my head.’
‘Box number three then. What does it hold?’
‘Ah, let me see . . . Yes. Box three holds Ash and Meer and the flight of the Falcon.’
‘You’re thinking of them, even here?’
‘Wondering how they are faring, yes. Hard not to, considering how important they might be to our cause. That one ship could sway the course of this entire war.’
‘If our best hope is that one ship making it to the Isles of Sky and back, then I truly doubt our chances.’
‘Nonsense. They’ll make it. I can feel it in my guts.’
‘More likely you’re feeling that stew you just ate.’
Coya chuckled softly in the firelight, a little high on the weed. He surprised Shard by reaching out a finger to poke her lightly on the arm, and then he did it again, provoking a reluctant smile from her. Nothing was so bad if you could still smile, his dancing eyes reminded her.
It was Coya’s gift, she had long ago noticed, his gentle use of touch to break through the skin-encapsulated barriers between people. A kind of magic when you saw him connect like that, and people responded to it in kind, with simple openness.
Just then, Shard caught the bodyguard Marsh watching her too, his eyes roaming over her silver half-mask and her leather-sheathed chest exposed beneath the parted cloak, but mostly lingering on her face, drawn to the satin-smooth glimmer of her second skin as though he desired to know what it would feel like against his own. So Marsh was still interested then, even after all these years of unrequited chasing, a chase that had been too much fun to simply end by taking him to bed.
She inclined her head, slowly looking him up and down too. Teasing him.
The bodyguard cleared his throat.
‘You seem spooked,’ she observed.
‘Just a feeling. Can’t seem to shake it tonight.’
Suddenly he inclined his head, listening to the faint sound of thumping in the far distance. Contrarè tree signals passing through the forest.
‘We’ll never catch up that Mannian delegation,’ Marsh muttered to Coya quietly, thinking of the most pressing matter at hand, as always. ‘They’ve too much of a head start on us.’
‘I know. I just wonder why they think the Contrarè will listen to them in the first place? What compelling case can they make for the Longalla to side with the Empire?’
‘Gold. Threats. The usual pleasantries, I reckon.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Coya grumbled to himself. ‘I don’t like it one bit.’
For all their riding they still hadn’t reached the Moth river, which the Contrarè had told them to aim for. From there they would have to find Council Grove by themselves, and before the passing of the full moons when the elders would be meeting in council.
For a time Shard stared at the fire and lost herself in the tumult of the flames. She breathed deeply to anchor herself, knowing that she would likely soar off at any moment if she allowed herself to, and prone to do so even if she didn’t.
The flakes of snow were falling on the back of her neck, minor dabs of coldness transmitted through the sheen of her glimmersuit. Coya rose stiffly to refill his mug of chee. Marsh the bodyguard stared out at the surrounding blackness of the forest, as though he could sense something out there. Shard followed his gaze, in no condition to go out and look with her mind’s eye.
Shadows danced between the trees like figures stalking closer. Shard huddled closer to the fire, longing for the security of home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Aiding the Enemy
From her sleeping furs the Dreamer’s eyes snapped open and fixed on a shape swaying close above her face, like a crooked stick somehow animated with life.
It was a crinkleback, Shard realized, spotting the patches of brown skin on the snake’s flanks resembling fallen leaves – edges upturned like the real things – and the tiny spines of its hood flaring in alarm.
The snake was gazing at her, its glassy eyes fixed on her own; two diamonds reflecting the glimmers of the camp fire.
By the fire, Marsh glanced over from his vigil with a puff from his cheroot, then turned away again, tossing another stick upon the coals.
Shard? announced a delicate voice in her head.
She stopped breathing for a few heartbeats. Wondered if it was another hallucination.
Shard, can you hear me?
An icy thrill ran down her spine like a drop of water. She knew it was Tabor Seech, talking remotely in some way not related to her farcry.
Tabor? What are you doing in my head?
I’m speaking through the snake. It’s been searching all night for you. Listen – there isn’t much time, I have to warn you about something.
Really? Last I heard you were working for the Mannians.
Well, yes, I am. But listen. Your position is about to be ambushed.
Shard screwed her face into a frown.
Aren’t we beyond pranks by now, Tabor?
You fool, I’m trying to warn you here! General Mokabi himself asked me to contact you. It’s complicated, and we don’t have time to go into details, but believe it or not Mokabi wants your mission to succeed. He wants the Contrarè of the Windrush to wage war against the Imperial Expeditionary Force.
You mean, he wants his rivals bogged down while he takes Bar-Khos for himself.
Precisely. You always were astute, Shard. Now listen!
Hold on. How did you know where to look for me?
A little birdy told me. It doesn’t matter. Now listen! One of your sentries is already dead. He just had his throat cut while we’ve been chatting. Imperial scouts are moving to surround your camp even now. You must waken the others. You must arm yourselves!
Tabor—
She paused, seeing the bodyguard Marsh suddenly drop his smoking cheroot by the fire as he peered at the surrounding darkness through his goggles, which she knew allowed him to see at night, for they had come from one of the Academies.
Do it now, Shard!
‘Up!’ she suddenly hollered as though struck by a fork of lightning, though when she jumped free of her skins she found that her tongue was like a dead thing in her mouth, still asleep. ‘Up!’
Marsh was kicking out the fire even as Shard evoked a glyph in her worm-addled mind, producing an implosion of air above the camp like a mighty hand clap and sending a rush of wind over them all. The flames of the fire were extinguished in an instant.
They were quick, these Volunteers. Men and women rose to arm themselves even as shadows sprang at them from the night.
Sparks flew from the clash of blades. Grunts and curses and bodies tumbling in the snow. A gunshot spat fire. Something whipped through the clearing, then something else followed after it; crossbow bolts zinging back and forth wildly.
The Dreamer willed to life her night vision so she could see the scene about her more clearly.
Figures were attacking from all around the perimeter of the sheltered hollow they were camped in. Dogs even, great wolfhounds leaping down through the brush. Most shocking of all was the sight of Contrarè with their feathers rising from their heads and machetes swinging high. Renegades by the looks of them, no war paint to be seen.
Some of the Volunteers had managed to load their rifles and were firing at anything that moved. At the centre of the camp next to the dead fire stood Captain Gamorre, bellowing orders even as she hastily fixed a pair of Owls over her eyes. Next to a tree trunk, young Xeno was kneeling on one knee with the butt of his sniper rifle nestled in his shoulder, scanning through the scope of the weapon calmly, eagerly. He fired once and
cracked the rifle open to reload it without looking away from the scene, already choosing his next target. Marsh was pulling a stirring Coya closer to the centre, sleeping skins and all.
Flashes around the perimeter, some gunshots being fired into the camp now. A Volunteer fell to the ground before her. A snarling wolfhound had grabbed another by the arm while a figure yelled and stuck him with a knife. Others were fighting toe-to-toe.
Too many of them, she realized, as anyone would have just then. They’re going to overrun us.
Captain Gamorre had seen it too.
‘Pull back!’ the woman started yelling. ‘Get to the zels!’
Not much that Shard could do while friend and foe were tangled up together like this. The two medicos were gathering up their field bags in a hurry and so Shard did the same, hauling her travel bag over her shoulder and then the heavy sleeping skins too.
When she turned towards the tethered zels the animals were already loose and scattering through the trees, bounding away up the slopes of the hollow. Some were panicked enough to charge across the camp instead, and one flashed past Shard, almost bowling her over. It carried on and crashed into Coya, who was rising at last from his skins with the help of his cane, knocking him backwards even as a crossbow bolt streaked past his head.
Coya fell and another bolt flashed over his sprawling form. Marsh was swearing over him, grabbing at the animal’s reins as he fought to calm it. Over his shoulder the bodyguard shouted something towards Shard, but she couldn’t make it out.
A frantic crunch of leaves sounded from behind. Even as Shard swung round she imaged a glyph in her mind and launched it towards the figure charging at her – a Mannian, who instantly stumbled over a tree root and sprawled into the snow. As the man rolled to a stop he tore off his night goggles, momentarily unable to see. Behind him a big wolfhound growled and bared its teeth.
Sweet Holy Mercy!
Fear rooted her to the spot as the animal leapt for her. It was like the sandcrawlers of the deep desert all over again, coming at them over the darkness of the dune. But then Shard flung herself out of the way and threw her hand back in the dog’s direction, casting another blindness glyph in its face. Still the creature was on her, tearing at her boots and legs.