by Mark Johnson
The warm breeze carried the scent of cabbage, boiling somewhere nearby.
They arrived at the BarracksWall, where BarracksSir Kemmer awaited them with some of his men in shade. Four shaggy men stood to the side in the sun, seemingly indifferent to the brightness and heat.
“Well, well,” Nocev exclaimed quietly. “They actually took me up on the offer.”
“What offer?” said Sarra. “Guarding at HopeWall cluster? Nocev, are you mad? They look like they’ve been living in a cadver barrow!” Had these four arrivals activated the artefacts? Surely they weren’t infected, for the lookout weavers would have picked that up.
“Kemmer,” Nocev said, not bothering with ‘BarracksSir’.
Tall, thin and quick with a spear, Kemmer nodded at the four strangers. “You know them, Nocev?”
The men were somewhere in their early twenties, though it was difficult to tell beneath their beards and shaggy hair.
“We reconsidered your offer, Nocev,” said a man with dark hair and a remarkably straight beard. Sarra struggled to understand him until she realized he spoke with a foreign accent, one that shortened his vowels and emphasized the consonants.
“Paan, Zale, Cess and Nic,” said Nocev pointing at each in turn for Kemmer’s benefit. “Mercenaries from Polis Armer. Arrived a year ago.”
6
I thought you weren’t interested in HopeWall,” Nocev said.
The man with the straight, dark beard spoke again. The one Nocev had named Cess. “We met an old friend from home. She convinced us to take your offer.”
“So, you didn’t manage to get further into the Polis after all?” Nocev said.
Cess shrugged. “We got to the border, but it wasn’t like they say. No one’s interested in trading us further in as hired guards. Unless we could pay them, which we couldn’t.”
“Really? It’s a month since you left our cluster. Where’ve you been?” Nocev finished with a pointed look at their clothes.
Cess patted his dirty shirt. “Sleeping in abandoned shelters, looking for a way in. But it’s the same story from Serenity to Sufferance. No one wants guards with white skin at the moment. Apparently, these things go in waves, and us being from Armer wasn’t relevant.”
“Why did you offer these four a place here, Nocev?” Kemmer interrupted, crossing his arms. “If there’s to be a siege, I need the best the Territories have on offer.”
Nocev turned her attention back to Kemmer. “They’re from Armer, which means they aren’t loyal to any other Wall. More importantly, they keep to themselves and won’t touch the girls. And you have never seen anything fight like these four. They were OremWall’s best foraging escorts. One of them is worth five of your drinking squad.” She tilted her head in the direction of guards, slouched against the Wall in the shade. “Every forage, I’m taking one of them with me.”
“HopeWall doesn’t pay coin or currency,” Kemmer said, not hiding his lack of enthusiasm.
“A year’s board will do fine,” Cess said.
“How did you sleep rough an entire month?” Kemmer said.
“We had leftover vibrations to buy food and dried skinleaf, and we foraged at some working hexagons and water pipes. We slept in the abandoned shelters near the Territory borders.”
Sarra allowed her shoulders to relax. Cess was too chatty and familiar to be in the early stages of infection, and if they were chaos weavers, the automatic deep scans run by the BarracksWalls gems should have alerted the Tower. No, these four wouldn’t be what the programs had picked up. So what had alarmed the ghosts?
Kemmer looked the four newcomers over. “Forages are increasing and Initiate Nocev’s family name carries a lot of weight. But I can’t take you in so easily.”
Ah, negotiations. Kemmer was about to leverage them into accepting more forage guard expeditions than standard.
“Well, Captain,” said Cess, “would you be interested in a trade? We learned something about the cadvers out there.”
“Cadvers moving north and west? We’ve heard. They might have gone past to Serenity. And I’m a BarracksSir.”
“Apologies, BarracksSir. Yes.” Cess reached into the pack at his feet. “This is our property, under right of forage.” Kemmer acknowledged their claim with a quick nod. Cess removed something from his pack and threw it at Kemmer’s feet.
Kemmer drew back his head and squinted. Sarra leaned forward for a look. The thing was thinner than an arm, solid metal, with a sophisticated hinge at the center. The tips were pinched, as if something had been twisted off at either end. Its many discolorations made it look as though it had been welded together from several smaller metal pieces.
“What is that, Tokkus?” said Kemmer.
Sergeant Tokkus knelt beside the object. One of the few native Sumadans at HopeWall, he was dark and muscular with a deep, melodic voice.
“The thickness of the joint, the durability of the metal, BarracksSir, suggests it was designed to take weight. It is thick and heavy enough to be a sophisticated hoist device, or similar. And it has been welded from many smaller pieces of metal, like scrap metal. But I cannot say much more, for metal crafts have never been my strength.” He tilted his head to the side. “Though… those scratches…”
Cess flipped the thing over. The faint scratches visible on the previous side were shallow, compared to the side now facing the sky. Many deep scores had been cut into the metal beam’s surface in ragged, irregular grooves.
Tokkus and Kemmer inhaled in unison. Sarra shared a wide-eyed glance with Nocev.
“Those are cadver scarrings,” said Tokkus. “Defensive wounds, I am certain.”
They looked up at Cess expectantly.
“Nocev,” Cess called. “The months we spent in your cluster… Were we searched before we were allowed in?”
“There’s no way they could have smuggled this in, Kemmer,” Nocev said. “And no reason not to have used this to barter for entry when they came.”
“Tokkus,” said Kemmer reluctantly, “did you ever see anything like this when you lived further in?”
“Nothing, BarracksSir.”
Straightening, Kemmer motioned to the guards at the BarracksWall gate, his gesture taking in Sarra and Nocev. They all stepped closer.
“In my capacity as BarracksSir of WestBarracksWall, I offer these four gentlemen of Polis Armer admittance to WestBarracksWall, and bind them to our laws and conduct. With Polis Sumad and these citizens as my witness, I extend to each of you this invitation.”
Cess replied, “I ask Polis Sumad to bear witness that I accept the Captain’s kind offer and thank him for his generosity. I pledge to serve with him as my station requires.” Zale, Paan and Nic repeated the oath after him.
When they were finished, Kemmer stared each of them in the face. “You are on two weeks’ trial. After that your year begins.” He looked them up and down deliberately. “You will shave and bathe. You will not start fights, steal, or touch the women.” When he mentioned women, he spoke more slowly. “You earn no currency nor coin. If you wish to worship Lord Armer, do it in private. We left Lord Ceneph behind when we arrived here. There’s a chapel in EastBarracksWall presided over by part-time priests. We follow the traditions and teachings of Prophet Farrah, who led us here.”
“Aye Captain,” the four said in perfect unison. Sarra could not remember hearing responses so perfectly coordinated.
“And Sir?” said Cess. “We worship Lord Sumad as well.”
“Well and good,” Kemmer nodded approvingly. “I’ve questions. We’ll continue inside.”
“Sir,” Cess said, pointing at Sarra and Nocev. “Could the initiates come? We might need a demonstration.”
“Fine.” Kemmer nodded at Sarra and Nocev.
What could they possibly want an initiate for? Their story wasn’t impossible, and they certainly looked — Sarra’s nose w
rinkled — and smelled as though they’d lived rough for a month.
Sergeant Tokkus went to lift the metallic thing and stumbled, like it weighed more than he’d expected. Astonished, he looked up at Cess, who smiled. Tokkus shook out his hands and hefted the beam, or rod, or whatever it should have been called.
Tokkus and Kemmer led them into the BarracksWall.
“Zale,” said Nocev to one of the Armen recruits, blond and taller than the other three, as they entered WestBarracksWall’s thick wooden door and climbed the stone steps, “when did you four, ah…?”
“A week before we left your cluster,” he said. “Decided to throw our lot in with Lord Sumad. No offense to Lord Armer, but it looks like we’ll be here a while. How’s OremWall?” They mounted the stone stairs, the external walls punctured by small cross-barred windows.
“Ah, let’s see. My cousin Nemmev had the girl. Both doing well. About twelve initiates and nineteen novices came here, in all. Wemmow got so drunk and so lost that he spent the night outside instead of in another Wall. Now his daughter has him on a curfew. Oh, yes. Some Seekers came.”
“Really?” he said.
“I know. They’ve been to OremWall, something like… once in my entire life. Didn’t say what they were after; just scanned everything they could. Took them two days, then they left. What else? Some coyotes howled all night and my mother had to stun them, and… I think that’s it.”
WestBarracksWall’s two ascending spiral staircases enclosed its internal rooms and chambers. They passed the ground floor, where Sarra recognized the musk of boiling skinleaf, replaced by smoke and the high-pitched squeal of metal against metal from the workshop on the second floor.
They left the stairs on the third floor and headed in, toward the administration area, its walls lined by old wooden filing cabinets and sagging chairs. Like most Walls, the floors were stone and plaster. Decent wood was expensive in the Territories. The BarracksSir led them to the map room, where a large, detailed rendition of Humility’s Walls, hexagons and pipes had been engraved on a rectangular table and colored with red, green, blue and yellow dyes. A dangling bulb flickered overhead.
The BarracksSir leaned on the table, hands spread wide. “Where’d you find that thing? And when?”
The one named Nic, slender with quick, darting eyes, leaned over the map, sticking his finger a few miles north-east of HopeWall. “We were here yesterday. A cadver barrow an hour away.”
Kemmer raised an eyebrow. “A barrow that near HopeWall. You’re sure?”
Zale stepped forward. “Weeks ago, we were at the border in an abandoned shelter, Captain. I’ve got good eyes, if you’re needing lookouts. Anyhow, one night I counted exactly twenty cadvers, six hundred feet from where we slept. They were in single file heading from Chastity toward north Humility.” He tapped the map.
“Cadvers don’t swarm, and a group of twenty would have torn each other apart.”
“I know what I saw, Sir. Exactly twenty.”
“It’s not possible.”
“I checked in the morning. I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been looking, but there was a trail. Claw tracks in the dirt, broken bushes, patterned depressions in the earth. The trail was thin, like they were in a file, just as I’d seen.”
“As if they were being controlled?” Tokkus suggested.
“I’m guessing, Sergeant. So, we followed them. We missed the trail a couple times, but always found it again.”
“You were a hunter in Armer?” asked the BarracksSir.
“More like a tracker, Sir. Two weeks we’ve followed their trail.”
“You’ve a death wish, you lot?”
“Yes, Sir. We were coming this direction anyhow. We tried following the trail to the end, but it didn’t end, just looped in a circle, with HopeWall on the inside. Maybe a ten-mile diameter?”
Sarra knew what a diameter was, but few guards would. These four spoke like well-educated weavers. As if guarding wouldn’t be their natural career choice.
“Well, lad, your eyes are off. The weavers have been casting surveillance weaves out for miles, and they’ve reported nothing of the sort.”
“I spotted an abandoned cadver barrow yesterday. We found that.” He pointed at the metal thing, which Tokkus had left leaning against the wall. “It wasn’t just that thing down there, Sir. There’d been a scrap. And I couldn’t tell how many cadvers were part of the pile that was left.”
Kemmer’s mouth twisted. “You just happened to stumble across another barrow massacre?”
Zale spoke quickly. “Near the barrow I found different prints. They weren’t cadver prints. More like circular dents.”
“You imply these dents were the prints of whatever has been dismembering cadvers around the Territories, brother?” said Tokkus, pensively.
Kemmer pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and inhaled. “None of this is believable. The only reason I have to believe you is that Nocev swears she’s seen you fight well. It’s not enough. I can’t act on this. The TowerMiss wants to know any signs the cadvers might be about to rise up, but all you’ve given me is an unidentifiable… lever, which is possibly some new device from further in with nothing to do with cadvers!” He threw his hands in the air.
“Aside from the scratches, Sir,” said Nic, quite earnestly.
“More to the point, you’re asking me to disregard HopeWall’s highest-ranked weavers, including the TowerMiss herself? They’ve seen no cadvers, but you found an entire barrow?” Kemmer stuck his finger hard on the map.
“We can’t weave, Sir,” said Zale. “My training’s a different discipline to the Tower.”
“Is any of it —”
“And there’s more.”
“Go on, then.”
Nic leaned forward. “First, there’s something I need to know. Why exactly does everyone come to HopeWall at pilgrimage, instead of securing their own Walls? If the TowerMiss is right that the cadvers are focused here, why does everyone come?”
Kemmer’s back straightened and he began gesturing, occasionally pointing at the map. “It’s counter-intuitive, I know, but it’s the best method. HopeWall, the Tower and Barracks are the single greatest Wall cluster in the Territories. At capacity, our cluster was designed to hold twenty thousand weavers and guards, and this is because more weavers process and refine a greater ratio of vibration weaves. More weavers, more defense weaves. Strength in numbers.
“Once the raw vibrations and weaves are made, they’re distributed by repeater stones out to the Walls. So her mother,” he pointed to Nocev, “can distribute and maintain defensive weaves out in OremWall, instead of exhausting her subordinates. Aggregated, increased defenses. That’s why Miss Harient called Pilgrimage when she found out about the skinned cadvers. Strength in numbers.”
That was as good an explanation of Pilgrimage as any non-weaver could make, Sarra thought.
“Ah,” Nic said, “that’s why the Enemy wants to take out HopeWall first. You break HopeWall, it destabilizes the Territories.”
“There’s no proof cadvers are focusing on HopeWall,” said the BarracksSir. “Cadvers can’t even focus.”
“Sir,” Nic cut in, “what if it were a golem butchering the cadvers and controlling them?”
Sarra groaned. It was unthinkable. Cadvers wouldn’t focus on HopeWall even if they could. It would be like suicide, except cadvers were already dead. The defense weaves would strip them of all their chaos energy before they even got near the Walls.
“Look,” she barked, “it’s impossible! The TowerMiss says the scans would have shown a golem. Even an illegal golem. Every Wall with a weaver has been scanning. HopeWall is the safest place in the entire Territories!”
“I’ve been considering the stories of mechanism smuggling,” Nic continued, unperturbed. “May I suggest a test? I see you have a spare bulb fixture available at th
e side.”
“It’s supposed to be used for examining the map,” the BarracksSir said.
“My friend,” Nic pointed to Cess, “can rig a wire flawlessly. I saw windmills at the windows earlier, is the electricity supply consistent?”
“Yes,” the BarracksSir sighed, putting his hands on his hips.
Zale picked up the metal object and put it on the map table, evidently not noticing the BarracksSir’s reddening face. If the display did not work, Sarra guessed these new recruits would find themselves with an excess of foraging duties.
That metal lever. What if that had upset the programs, but the Tower lookouts had missed it? Zale had claimed the cadvers were slipping under the Tower and Wall’s surveillance nets. So how had the ghosts sensed it?
Ever since MarverWall, things hadn’t quite made sense. It was as if simple equations had begun showing ‘does not equal’ symbols. Their neighbor dying of a brain hemorrhage, cadvers torn open in their barrows, and the ghosts reacting to nothing.
She’d thought herself the HopeWall expert on energy for years now, even if she’d kept that opinion to herself. Despite looking like mad desert wanderers, the foreigners’ confidence said they knew more than they let on. They’d glossed over how they’d stumbled on this strange metal rod, when surely that was the most important part. To Sarra, what they didn’t say seemed more important.
Cess used a length of copper wire stored near the fixture to supply the object with electricity, attaching it near the hinge. “Ready,” he said, pulling the palm-sized iron switch on the wall.
The thing didn’t move, or even hum. The BarracksSir’s eyes narrowed to slits. Sarra and Nocev traded glances.
“This is our last vibration stone,” Nic said, pulling a small white-and-red streaked stone from his pocket. Some of the wastes’ dust had traveled indoors in his pockets, and fell to the floor.
Yes, she could sense a few vibration weaves within that stone, possibly medicinal, though she couldn’t be certain without going into trance state to check. But there was something else within that stone, for the vibration weaves seemed a little too squeezed.