I nodded, taking it all in. The world was bigger and stranger than any of us knew.
‘All right, pard,’ I said to Gynth. ‘So that’s that. But if you see Lina, tell her to hie her arse home, will you?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘But I will tell her to hurry.’
‘This is all well and good,’ Livia said. ‘But the hour grows late and we’ve one more thing to decide.’
‘What is that?’ Tenebrae asked.
‘The Typhon,’ she said. ‘It is a formidable ship.’
‘Just today we sank a littoral and a troop ship,’ Carnelia added. ‘Would that it had been full of soldiers.’
‘We could scuttle it in the lake,’ Tenebrae said. ‘I am desperate to be off her and on land once more, but I am loath to destroy her, as well. She’s served us well.’
‘And may serve us again in need,’ Livia said. ‘But I cannot countenance her falling into Medieran hands. Now she is a secret.’
‘A secret?’ I asked. ‘She’s sleek, I’ll give you that, but—’
‘Shoe, you do not understand the true nature of the Typhon,’ Livia said. ‘She is submersible.’
‘You’re shitting me,’ I said.
‘I shit you not,’ Livia responded. She allowed a smile to cross her features. But I felt as though she did so only due to the niceties of our reunion.
‘That is something I will have to see,’ I said.
‘It will be some time before that, if ever,’ Livia said. ‘I fully intend to leave her this very night and ride east with you. She’ll either be destroyed or—’
‘Or will have herself a new commander,’ Tenebrae said. ‘I will take her. She is too valuable to lose and I am still of Rume. I’ll not let the Typhon fall into Medieran hands.’
‘Where will you take her?’ Livia asked.
‘Back into the bay,’ Tenebrae said. ‘To Wickerware, I think. And to Covenant. I will move between them.’
‘No,’ Livia said. ‘Rume will need the Typhon.’
‘But the Hardscrabble is contested. The future is uncertain. You may need me and I would not see Fiscelion in want of a ship and none to be had.’
‘I can’t—’ Livia began.
Tenebrae held up his hand. ‘I will harry the Medierans by sea. I will go to Covenant or Aurelia and get lascars. But on the nones, and the ides, and seven ides, I will be in Wickerware. This is my word and warrant. It is the closest port to us not held by Mediera. If you signal, with fire, with smoke, I will see. Understood?’
There was a long silence as we all considered this. Finally, Livia nodded her head. She kissed Tenebrae and whispered, ‘Secundus could have done worse.’
The blush that filled the man’s face was priceless.
‘Well, fuck,’ Carnelia said. ‘You can’t run her alone. You’ll need me. Running a ship with only two lascars is … ridiculous.’
‘We did it with four,’ Tenebrae said. ‘I’ll stay beneath the waves.’
‘Gynth,’ I said. ‘Can you fetch Catch Hands?’
The vaettir nodded and leapt away, legs churning faster than butterfly wings when he hit the water, leaving a moon-silvered wake behind him.
In moments Catch Hands was on deck and spluttering. ‘You fuckin’ gullet, manhandling me like that! I ought to—’ He caught sight of Livia and Carnelia. ‘Pardon me, madames. Ladies.’
‘Inbhir,’ I said. ‘Allow me to introduce you to the crew of the Typhon.’ I went through them one by one, without forgetting Fiscelion himself, who gurgled and laughed at Catch Hands’ amazed face. ‘Would you believe that this ship is submersible?’ I asked.
He looked at me with a puzzled expression, very much like Gynth when confronted with a word in common he did not understand. ‘What’s that?’
‘Submers—’ I stopped. ‘It means that this ship will dive under the surface of the water.’
‘You’re shitting me,’ he said. Tenebrae laughed.
‘I shit you not,’ I said.
‘That’s something I need to see,’ Catch Hands said.
‘That can be arranged,’ Livia said. ‘Welcome to the crew of the Typhon, Mister Inbhir.’
‘Mister? Nobody’s ever called me “mister” before,’ Catch Hands said. ‘Everybody calls me Catch Hands.’
Livia embraced Carnelia and Tenebrae, giving them each a very formal Ruman farewell – a kiss on both cheeks, a hand on first her heart, then theirs. Grown stronger, that one, and colder. Full of steel, and hard-bitten. I hoped she had not become brittle with her transformation.
Lupina endured Carnelia’s fawnings with some aplomb, but she frowned when she noticed me watching. Carnelia wept and covered Fiscelion’s face in kisses. He squirmed and made outraged sounds. The boy was ornery. She spoke in a hushed, raw voice. I drew Catch Hands away to give them their privacy. They had circumnavigated the world, almost, by themselves in a ship they’d stolen. I could not imagine the bonds something like that forged. The three of them had a connection and their fellowship was breaking – only Livia remained dry-eyed.
To save us from swimming or the Typhon foundering in the shallows, Gynth ported us one by one to the shore. Except for Lupina, who refused to be separated from Fiscelion. She fashioned an infant’s sling and glared at the vaettir as if daring him to say or do anything in response. Once ashore, the dvergar woman sank to her knees and kissed the dirt of the Hardscrabble and whispered, ‘Home.’
The sky wore its deepest cloak of night, the moon having passed beyond the rim of the earth. Gynth looked to the White Mountains. ‘I may die,’ he said to me, simply, in the dvergar tongue.
‘Are you afraid?’ I asked.
‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘I do not want to die.’
‘Do you think you’ll be able to make this bargain with your kin?’ I said.
‘Our kin,’ he said. ‘We are of this land.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I guess we are.’
‘I think the sleeping ones will awaken, as I did,’ he said. ‘We live long lives, and fall into nights that seem endless. But all nights end.’ He looked at me and placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘I will wake them and we will cut a furrow together. Or—’
‘Or?’
‘They will kill me for the waking.’ He shrugged.
‘Try not to let that happen,’ I said.
‘I will try,’ he said.
‘We are more than gynth.’
He cocked his head, quizzical.
‘We are friends. Go with my thoughts, my prayers to the numen of stone and sky,’ I said.
With a ruffle of cloth, he launched himself into the air and sped away.
We were two days on the Hardscrabble plain back to Grenthvar. In the days gone, considerable fortifications had been erected – deep trenches, the Frislandian wooden crosses that looked like many crucifixions lined up in a row and then turned on their sides, jumbled masses of stone at the edge of the killing fields, sniper towers on ridgelines and in the trees. Two score of wheeled cannons formed a line, half-obscured by the multiple iron-shod dragon’s teeth littering the killing fields. Sangars and escarpments were being dug and constructed by shirtless and sweating legions who paid us no mind as we passed. The mechanised wagons with the large-bore swivelling cannons looked to the west and had good vantage over the whole mouth of the valley. The trees around the Grenthvar River had all been cut down. A sad sight to see, but they offered too much cover.
Black smoke poured toward the heavens from the Breadbasket and my dvergar kin – pushing one wheelbarrow after another – added to the ever-growing slag heaps on the edges of the fortification line. The sounds of industry, hammer-falls, tumbling timber, lumber being worked, the cries of workmen and legionnaires, filled the air of the valley.
A stillness had descended upon Livia, though, and even Fiscelion seemed to pick up on it. An optio, seeing us approach the praetorium tent and dismount, ducked inside.
Fisk appeared, his face stricken with disbelief. He took two measured steps tow
ard Livia. He stopped.
Then he ran. At the end he fell to his knees before her. He clutched her to him, pressing his face into her stomach – ending their separation as it began.
Livia drew him up, and kissed him. She looked into his face for a long while and whispered something I could not hear. Then she beckoned Lupina forward and Fisk took up his son in trembling hands.
For the first time in my experience, I watched the tears well up and fall from him.
He raised his son on high with both hands and gave an exultant cry.
TWENTY-TWO
Make Them Fear The Night.
Kill Their Horses. Unman Them.
ENTERING THE RUMAN camp, I soon learned that Seanchae had returned from his scouting expedition. I found him at the mess tent, making short work of a mutton stew, spooning it into his maw with abandon and sopping it up with coarse bread.
‘Lina went north, up Broken Tooth way,’ he said between mouthfuls, when I asked him about my granddaughter. ‘She was to push west to Sundered Rock and get a take on the Medierans at Passasuego.’
‘And you?’ I asked.
‘Porto Caldo and Hot Springs,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t get too close because the Medierans were thicker than ticks in a dog’s ear.’
‘How many do you think?’ I asked.
‘I reckon a thousand there, at least,’ he said. ‘I’ve made my report to the legate. Didn’t seem too happy about it.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t be.’ I scratched my beard.
‘You sweet on her, or something?’ Seanchae asked. ‘You’re a mite long in the tooth for a woman that spry, I reckon.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s my daughter’s kid.’
‘Ah. Well, I’ve scouted with Lina for nigh on a decade, and there ain’t no one that can stop her when she don’t want to be stopped, or find her when she don’t want to be found. She’ll be back soon enough,’ he said.
Camp took on its final form, and I could see the town it would be someday if it continued on its current path without molestation – neat streets in a grid, brew tent, mess tent, praetorium tent billowing from the centre. At the edges, munitioners and farriers and craftsmen. Throughout, the bustle of legions fulfilling their duties.
Fisk and Livia spent the night together, of course, in the praetorium. The junior legates, messengers, secretaries, lictors, engineer liaisons, and Ruman personnel on whom the command of legions depended were, if but for a single night, exiled to the domain of the rankers, taking their stew in their own tents. There was much speculation in the general population of camp as to their commander and his newly returned wife’s reunion. And their night-time exertions. But, on the whole, the legionnaires’ opinion of their commander, which was tenuous at best beforehand, had swung toward pride.
Word came to me in the morning that Lina had returned. I found her heading for the Breadbasket but caught her before she passed beyond the Pactum Wall.
‘Heard you went outriding, looking for me,’ she said, shaking her head.
I shrugged. ‘I had my reasons. You were late.’
‘Shot my pony, I had to lead a passel of beaners up and down the escarpment on foot and then steal one of their horses as they slept.’ She gave me an evil smile. ‘Those that were still alive,’ she said, hefting her carbine.
‘And the dispensation of the Medieran troops?’ I asked.
‘Swarming around Passasuego, mad as Hell the silver’s petering out.’
‘Numbers?’ I asked.
‘Five battalions. The beaners organise their troops differently to Rumans. Three thousand. Five hundred horse. A contingent of cannoneers. Not much heavy artillery, though, we’re evenly matched there,’ she said. ‘And few engineers, though the ones they have are guarded like virgins at Ludi Florae.’ She sniffed. ‘They’re mobilising. Word has reached them of the fortifications here. They’re cocky as Hell now that Novorum burns.’ She squared her shoulders and looked at me. ‘But we’re far from the sea, where their strength is.’
‘That’s true. They’re not known so much for their land forces. Livia told of some hellacious large artillery coming from their destroyers.’
‘Over here, the scariest damned things they’ve got is a bevy of those freakish daemon-gripped men, and they bound about, patrolling the city now, like hounds.’
‘How many?’
‘No clear way to tell, but a shitload,’ Lina said. She sucked her teeth. ‘And they’re using them as scouts.’
‘That’s not good,’ I said.
‘Hell no, it isn’t. And what’s worse, it all has to do with that hand that daemon-gripped stretcher wanted.’
‘Not exactly.’ I hesitated. ‘You’re fishing.’
‘It’s something, and I want to know what,’ she said. ‘I’m not risking my arse again for the Rumans unless I know why.’
I drew her aside. ‘It’s difficult to explain, but it’s tied up with the engineer that started all this.’
‘The one you got hogtied?’ she asked.
‘Not any more,’ I said.
She looked at me, meaningfully.
‘Harbour Town,’ I said. ‘That was on him. Rume. All the daemon-gripped. Him. I put the son of a bitch out of his misery.’
She shrugged. ‘Nice to see you’ve not gone totally tame,’ she said. ‘But this hand he was after. You’re gonna tell me what it is.’
So I did, the whole story. She looked amazed by the end of it.
‘Well, that’s a doozy. And I can see why they want it. Someone willing to use it would be desperate. Or insane,’ she said.
‘Or both,’ I said.
‘It’s of no matter to Neruda and Praeverta now, I imagine. Your boss has got his legions around him and no one will take it from him.’
‘I think he’d be fine with someone taking that yoke from him,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’d give up the responsibility that easily, though. Once he’s got his teeth into something, he never lets go.’
‘He’ll either be a great commander. Or a dead one,’ Lina said, and without a word turned to go.
The next day brought rumour of Medierans in force on the Hardscrabble. Fisk summoned Lina and myself to his praetorium to take breakfast. Livia attended as well, and she greeted me with much warmth, kissing me on the cheek and immediately presenting me with Fiscelion. The tightness I’d sensed about her had unclenched some, though her appearance was unaltered, but she seemed more refreshed and better rested. The child, on the other hand, was a bundle of energy.
I entertained myself with the boy, who was a sturdy little pup. He liked tugging at my mustachios and nose, and squirmed and fought to place my big, blunt fingers in his mouth.
‘He’s teething,’ Livia said. ‘And will nip your fingers off, Shoe.’ Lupina watched me closely, frowning. But she couldn’t squawk overloud since the boy took to me well enough and I stood high in Livia’s favour.
‘He’s got a strong grip, that’s for sure,’ I said, wincing as young Fiscelion mauled my beard.
Fisk laughed and gestured for Lupina to take the boy. I was a mite disappointed – I was never the most doting of men, but the older I grow, the more I appreciate youth, the white parchment of it. The Hardscrabble is a great arena where only providence and willingness to defend your own against others, the land, the creatures that walk upon it, keeps you alive. But you never come out the other side unmarred. All the more reason to cherish the unblemished, the innocent, the young. I looked at Lina.
‘More scouts have returned. Ruman outriders report that the Medierans have abandoned all secrecy and they’re riding patrol in great numbers with gunmen and daemon-gripped throughout the shoal grasses and Hardscrabble,’ Fisk said.
‘Sounds about right,’ Lina said, nodding. ‘They can field more soldiers, so they’ve become brazen. No need for subterfuge.’
‘This morning, I let blood for the Quotidian, the one linked with Marcellus, and much news came to me,’ Fisk said, looking grave. ‘The world is in shambles, ev
en beyond Occidentalia. Rume is gone. Tamberlaine has moved his capital north, toward Gall, and ensconced himself in his northern palace where the Unsch River falls into Latinum, his forces in disarray. Mediera has formed an alliance with some Tuetons, and provides them Hellfire and support. They harry Tamberlaine unmercifully, and neither can carve out a decisive victory. An archdaemon still prances about in fire in the ruins of Rume. Novorum is destroyed, along with Fort Lucullus. Marcellus’ forces have suffered major losses and have ventured south to Covenant and the mouth of the Mammon. From there he will attempt to mobilise and bring them west. Though there is no evidence of Mediera landing any significant forces on the east coast.’ He turned to the maps scattered about the main praetorium table. ‘All attention has been directed here. Because of the silver. Kithai wars with itself – and your friend the Sword of Jiang is at the centre of that, alongside his brother, as they attempt to unify the nation. Yet Mediera has set its eyes on Far Tchinee and has split its fleet. Medieran warships harbour in the Jiang bay.’
A secretary brought us boiled chicory coffee in ceramic mugs. Fisk took up his and winced after sipping. It was bitter.
‘“Silver changes all fortunes,” so says Willem Bless,’ he said. ‘Rume’s has changed for the worse, and with it, all of the indigenes’.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Seems that the dvergar, at least, have gained some, pard.’
Fisk frowned. ‘In 2301, Pierga the Bilious of Mediera killed every native on Cephalenia – a people very much like the dvergar and without their vaettir cousins. He tore down their buildings, their temples, razed their villages, renamed the blasted isle Balearia and set up an Ia-damned duchy. The cephalos are gone now, all of them. The Medierans have killed whole races.’
‘Is Rume so different?’ I said.
Livia arched an eyebrow. ‘You are still alive, are you not?’
‘Thanks to our vaettir cousins, I would hazard,’ I said. ‘And the fact that Rume loves slaves and servants almost as much as Hellfire.’
Fisk waved his hand, dismissing the statement. ‘I will not argue with you regarding Rume’s oppressive tendencies. However, we have a history of democracy, though the line of Tarquins that have landed us with Tamberlaine have changed us as a nation. Yet some of that democracy still lives. We are pragmatic, to the core. Mediera has passed from pragmatism into madness.’
Infernal Machines Page 24