“Quinn seems more than capable of dealing with whatever happened,” said Nuria.
“I’m not convinced.”
He wasn’t. He was far from convinced. A feeling was lingering inside and he didn’t like it. It was more than the pressing gloom of the Holy House and the down trodden vulnerability of the villagers.
“Quinn believes she was murdered.”
“What if she’s wrong?”
“Then no harm done.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“A child doesn’t knowingly wander into a city of death. Something else must have happened.”
“It’s not our problem.”
She walked away from him.
“I like making things our problem.”
“Well, where were you in Tamnica?” she shouted. “Where were you when I was being raped? Did you make that your problem?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Look, maybe we should just focus on the job we’re being paid to do.”
He looked crushed. “You’ve been crying again.”
“I’m not sleeping much.”
He said nothing.
“It’s always there.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I close my eyes and it’s always there.”
She looked at the scar down his face.
“And it’s always there for you. That bastard took a whip to you and they almost killed you in isolation.”
He still said nothing. Those months alone haunted him.
“I see their all their faces, Stone. The Warden, Captain Niklas, Cathy. I can hear their voices and I can still smell the cells and taste the rank food.”
“The bastards are dead now.”
She shivered.
“Then why am I still afraid?”
He wanted desperately to find the right words but lacked them. He had met her down the barrel of a gun, finger on the trigger, only a whisper from pushing her violently out of this world, putting her in the dirt like so many before. But he had hesitated. Something in her eyes had stopped him.
His thick fingers curled around her slender wrist. He pushed up her sleeve. She lowered her eyes to the symbols branded into her pale skin.
“You’re stronger than that,” he said. “You always have been. I know you always will be.”
She lifted head. A tear rolled from her eye. He smudged it with his thumb.
“Never again,” he said.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I can.”
He lowered his eyes. “What you asked me yesterday … about stopping … sort of … of finding a place … you know, a place where you belong.”
“Forget what I said yesterday.”
“No, it’s important. It’s just … I wouldn’t know how to stop. Not like Emil and the Map Maker. Some follow a path that runs in a circle. I don’t know how to do that.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“But when I’m …” He cleared his throat. Took a moment. Tried again. “When I’m around you I feel like I belong.”
Nuria bit her lip. “That’s enough for me.”
He took her hands between his. She felt the roughness, the warmth.
“Me too.”
She breathed deeply. “There’s something wrong here, isn’t there?”
He nodded.
“Where is Mosscar?” she asked.
Stone smiled.
There were footsteps. It was Boyd. “Good morning.”
Stone let her hands drop. She tugged down her sleeve.
“Are you ready?”
He led them into a large building that buzzed with activity. They had expected a simple wagon with tied down boxes but Boyd’s travelling shop was packed into a rusted truck with metal plates welded across its giant tyres. It would be drawn by six horses. A man was busy harnessing them and a second man was loading onboard the last of Boyd’s merchandise. Stone circled the vehicle, noting how the engine had been stripped out to provide less weight to pull. He imagined it was the same throughout. Anything unused would have been removed. He had seen this method utilised numerous times on Gallen once vehicles had exhausted their precious black energy.
The back doors were wide open. Inside it was crammed with boxes, sacks, crates, folding tables, stacks of wooden trays, buckets and bedding. A metal ladder led to a hatch in the roof. He stepped back and looked up; the edge of the roof was ringed with iron spikes jutting downward, ideal for repelling attackers, and metal panels formed a defensive wall, providing adequate cover.
“Impressive.”
“Quinn usually rides up there,” said Boyd.
Stone put one boot onto the back of the truck.
“What about the law forbidding the use of things from the past?”
“I make healthy donations to the Holy House,” said Boyd, pressing his lips against the cross around his neck.
“I’m sure you do.”
“They understand that if I was unable to trade then I would be unable to make any further donations.”
Nuria curled her lip. “Laws are laws until important men need to subvert them.”
Boyd stared at her, but failed to muster a reply.
Holding the crossbow she climbed onto the front of the truck. She unbuckled her sword and placed it at her feet. Only the seating remained of the cabin. There was no roof or doors or windshield or dashboard. The back doors slammed shut and she heard a bar drop into place. Her body was tired but her thoughts were sharp and her heart lifted as she thought of the tender moment she had shared with Stone. Her life was bereft of tender moments.
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms as Boyd picked up the reins.
“I’m not a corrupt man,” he said. “I want you to know that.”
“I’m sure you’re not.”
The road out of Brix was heavily rutted and the horses laboured uphill for the first hour, struggling to gather any speed. Nuria looked behind her as the hatch creaked open and Stone appeared on the roof, binoculars around his neck, crossbow beside him.
The truck bounced and jolted from side to side. Nuria was thinking she could walk quicker but Boyd seemed unperturbed and she recalled Quinn’s words about how the man knew what he was doing. The track began to fade and the ground levelled out and soon the horses were galloping across open countryside and the vehicle was powering forward.
Stone lowered his binoculars and signalled to Nuria that there was no immediate threat, the rooftop providing a much greater vantage point. He could hear Boyd talking with her but he couldn’t make out what was being said. Boyd spoke. Nuria listened. The horses continued to steer the heavy load across deserted fields. He glimpsed streams and brooks, footpaths and wooden bridges. On the sloping hills he spotted scattered farms where men tended the land with their children. Early morning wreaths of mist dissipated and the sun shredded the lazy white clouds. It rose high and grew strong and the three of them wound scarves around their scalps for protection.
They joined a fresh track, climbing south-west. The hills dropped and the trees thinned out. Then Boyd angled the truck west and surged along the Ennpithian coastline, hooves thundering. Stone and Nuria saw the sea for the first time that morning, shiny and glistening beneath the red scarred blue sky. Nuria looked back at him and he nodded. It was a stunning view and hard to believe it was the same sea they had feared dying in a few nights ago. Boyd smiled broadly, delighted with the look that had passed between his new escorts.
“It’s one of my favourite spots in Ennpithia,” he called out. “It’s a beautiful view.”
Stone tasted salt on his rough lips. He fished out his water canteen. Hot wind blasted his face as he drank.
It was hard to imagine that such a world as this one existed but he was unable to deny the swathes of greenery, the dense forests, the colours in the meadows and the pastures, the stillness of the lakes, the flow of the rivers, the sweep of the valleys and hills, stretching in every direction, bleeding against the sky. He had
been born upon rock and sand - his mouth always dry, his freckled back always burnt, his head always filled with adventure - and the harsh challenge of hacking out a life in the wastelands had been the words and worries of men and women much older and much wiser. He had been a child of the ones who had come before and the ones before them and right back through the centuries and as a child he had grown up with the stories that had travelled the corridors of time; the future had been robbed from them, the world was not how it should have been, the Ancients had melted its beauty with fire and hate and now there was only ash for his generation and the generations to come. But he had been a shirtless child running with his sister, his hand wrapped protectively around hers, and past and future did not exist until they collided, ruthlessly, when the men in uniforms arrived. He had never seen the ash until that day and had spent the rest of his life drowning in it. But here, in Ennpithia, Stone saw no ash. There was only Mosscar and Mosscar was that inexorable link to the Before and it was this contradiction that hammered at his thoughts. Because if Mosscar stood then where was the rest of the civilisation that had fallen?
And with the unexpected revival of childhood memories, stained ugly with brutality, darkness surged toward him and attempted to blacken his soul. His eyes focused on Nuria. There had been women before her, ones he’d sweated and laboured against, especially after fighting and killing and drinking, but he had not cared for them and doubted they had cared much for him. Nuria was more than that and his feelings for her galvanised him, strengthened him to suffocate pieces of the darkness. She steadied his breath. She unclenched his fists. She was the whisper in the night that stopped him tumbling into the abyss. The singers and storytellers would call it love but he wasn’t sure he even understood love; his thoughts were cushioned against hers and he watched for her, waited for her; was that love? The coldness had begun to splinter and shafts of light had penetrated. He had walked the wastelands and marked his path and it had been one of blood and corpses but now she was peering in and he was peering out and he knew there was a chance of something more and something better.
That was what he knew. That was all he knew. And Stone considered it to be quite a lot.
Late in the afternoon, Nuria spotted five riders with painted chests and long knotted hair.
“Shaylighters,” said Boyd.
Axes and spears hung from their saddles. Stone kept his binoculars trained on them as they shadowed the truck across the plains.
“No Essamon,” he called out.
Nuria gave the thumbs up.
For an hour, the warriors mirrored their movement. Then they galloped away into the hills and disappeared.
“That happens a lot,” said Boyd. “They have a few sniffs and decide whether to come after us or not.”
It was dark when they approached the village of Great Onglee. The Shaylighters had not returned. The track into the village was muddy and the way ahead was lit by torches glowing in watchtowers. There were clusters of wooden huts and mud huts and stone houses with thatched roofs. Churchmen soldiers in iron helmets and leather armour with tunics adorned by the cross recognised Boyd’s vehicle and waved it through. The portly merchant slowed the horses to a canter and they trotted along mostly deserted lanes toward a brightly lit estate with high walls, located on the southern fringe of the village. They rode through open gates and Stone and Nuria saw a large house with scattered outbuildings.
“You stay with the truck overnight. The stable hands will take care of the horses.”
He yawned, stretched.
“Stay alert. We set up for business before dawn.”
He patted his horses and strode toward the house where a tall and well dressed man with an angular face and thinning hair waited to greet him. Young stable hands emerged from the gloom and wordlessly unhooked the horses, leading them away to be washed down, brushed, fed and stabled. Two armoured men with swords and crossbows patrolled the grounds and nodded at them as they lingered beside the rusted truck.
Boyd disappeared into the house and the door closed with a heavy slam. The wind coursed around them, stinking of the sea, and they could hear the angry crash of waves against nearby cliffs.
Stone said, “I’ll take the first watch. You look tired.”
She patted him on the arm.
“I’d rather keep you company.”
He nodded.
“Besides, I can tell you all I learned about Mosscar.”
It was too dark to garden. But gardening took his mind off things. Scrabbling in the soil, snipping and trimming; it was a platform for inner peace and clarity, sometimes more than prayer offered. He was certain the Lord was not offended by his admission of such a thing. Surely that was why He had provided him with such a fertile plot of land to work with, surrounding a tumbledown cottage of stone and wood and thatch that served as a modest rectory. It made all kinds of sense. But the question was still gurgling around his mind. It had plagued him since the man’s arrival though Father Devon would stoutly resist answering it.
For the time being, anyway.
His brow furrowed as he pottered around tidying and organising things that were fastidiously tidied and organised. Why was the Lord testing him during his twilight years? Or was the appearance of the man a reward and not a test? He hummed simple hymns and folk songs. He studied his dry flower arrangements and a tapestry he had woven. He watched the moon and the stars. It wasn’t working. There was no way to fill his evening. His chores were finished. He had to confront the question. It was obviously a mistake. He had made it before. But he had read those words since childhood; they were a part of him now, as natural as prayer or taking a breath, and there was something about this man; he felt it in his bones.
No, he was not yet ready for it.
He sniffed his body and the smell was sour so he put the water on. Once boiled, he hung up his robes and bathed and now he sat before a blazing fire, clad in woollen garments and wrapped with blankets, and the question became fierce and angry. The priest shivered. It was not the question that brought on the sudden chill; he always felt the cold. Summer or winter his skin was persistently icy and tightly drawn around his bones. He wondered how many years lay ahead of him. His mind was bright and his body was reasonably agile for a man of his years but he was the second oldest man in the village and he did not know many men who lived far beyond his age. Death would stalk him. He poured wine, drank and the heat of the liquid engorged his throat and burned through his chest.
He eased forward in his chair, holding his cross, drawing strength and comfort as the fire crackled. He glanced around his simple home, shadows dancing over the stone walls. It seemed very empty tonight. His faith to the cross was unwavering but lately he had been troubled by an outpouring of feelings, of a life somehow unfulfilled. He had touched hundreds of souls and blessed hundreds of unions but at times Father Devon questioned how he would be remembered once he passed. Was his destiny that of simply another marker in the graveyard? Would there be no legacy to represent his lifetime of devotion?
He stared into the snapping flames, unblinking, thoughts idling. You love her. You have always loved her. Her words have travelled time and found sanctuary in your heart. You have offered the space to no one else. He might be the one. He might be the legacy you seek.
Father Devon rose decisively from his chair and drained his wine. He knew the question was to be avoided no longer. He hurriedly pulled a heavy cloak around his shoulders and opened a chest beside his chair, retrieving a large bunch of keys, a chisel and a knife in a sheath. He concealed the items beneath his clothing. He was a man of the Lord and a man of faith but he was also a man of this violent world and only a fool wandered the night unarmed. He raised his cross and kissed it before stepping out into the night.
The village was peaceful. The lanes were empty and black. A sprinkle of stars blinked at him. He walked sprightly toward the Holy House, the building a foreboding smudge in the darkness, like a giant thumb. Clouds drifted above. Cattle groaned. Fath
er Devon experienced a peculiar sensation of being observed. He stopped, in the middle of the lane, and looked around. The stone hovels stared blankly back at him. Thin smoke was caught in the grasp of the wind. A shiver rippled his spine. His eyes pierced the gloom but he saw no one. He waited. His mouth was suddenly dry. He curled a hand around the handle of the knife, narrowed his vision.
A door was thrust open revealing a column of candlelight and he clenched. A man spilled into the night, unsteady on his feet. Father Devon recognised the outline of Antolly. The wiry man rocked from side to side as he relieved himself.
The priest let out his breath.
He locked the doors behind him and knelt at the altar for a short prayer. He lit a candle and carried it to a wooden door with iron banding. The room beyond was dark. He set the candle down, revealing a large trapdoor. He pushed a heavy iron key into the lock and turned it.
He hesitated.
The old words saddened him, penned in a barbarous world of greed and unfettered brutality.
She had died in that world. Probably at the hands of cruel men. He could change nothing of the past.
But could he now shape the future?
He followed the steps into the basement where he hurriedly lit more candles, taking solace in the bright glow.
The air was moist and Father Devon was cold. A long chest rested upon wooden supports. The priest could feel his heart beating faster as his sandaled feet glided across the stone floor toward it. Oddly, at that moment, he thought of Sal Munton and his many children. Within a few days they would arrive at Touron. The trial was a matter of formality and they would be condemned to hang. The question rattled violently within him and forced him to unlock the long chest.
Who was the stranger? Who was he really? Was it possible? Was it deception? Was it a test?
The priest laid down the knife and the ring of keys and used the chisel to prise open the lid of the chest. A musty smell assailed his nostrils. He propped the lid against the wall and placed the chisel on the floor. The chest was deep and contained books from the time of the Ancients. No books had been made in his lifetime. Nor in that of his ancestors. Only the Ancients had bound pages. In Touron there were letters and documents, thousands of them, but no printing presses and no books. His fingers glided over the volumes with battered covers and torn spines and tanned pages.
The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) Page 9