by Ben Galley
That meant it was time. With a grunt and a sigh, the old goatherd planted the trail-bitten soles of his boots on the ground and hoisted himself up with his stick. He gave a sharp whistle and poked the goats one by one into a rough group, as together as goats like to be. They needed a firm hand at all times, and he liked to be more than firm.
As Barnamus led his herd a winding muddle through rocky outcrops and cactus patches, following the shoreline, he cast wary glances at the water’s edge. Driftwood, lots of it, had been pushed ashore by the desert breeze. Each piece was charcoal-black and smoothed by fire. Barnamus wrinkled his brow.
An hour trudged past, one thankfully free of any escape attempts from the mischievous goats. The river bent, and the shoreline with it. The goatherd and his charges had to scrape through a cut in the rock to reach the flat, open ground beyond the curve.
Destruction has a penchant to be noticed and adored. It tugs at the eyes, yanking a gaze into its clutches before the mind can get up out of its chair. Whether it is manmade or Maker-wrought, you can’t help but stare. And so it was that Barnamus stared, wrinkled eyes cranked wide, at the smoking hulk of a mighty riverboat that was crumpled against the far shore.
The once grand-looking vessel had been gutted by fire. It slumped like a drunk in the water, still clinging onto its anchors, a black shell of broken iron, still smoking in places where the cinders burnt on in the daylight. The river water around its belly was stained oily, black as the iron in places.
Barnamus tapped his goats away from the water, whacking their skinny legs with his stick and whistling at them sharply. One started to trot away, but a hoarse shout and a look that promised a firm grip and a sharp knife brought the little beast right back.
The old goatherd fished a spyglass from his beaten-up satchel and peered through it, screwing up one eye. He could see nothing but ash and dead metal, and nothing in the water for the old goatherd to scavenge. Barnamus shrugged disappointedly and poked his goats onwards.
He got them ten paces further on before one of the beasts made a break from the herd. Spooked or distracted, it cantered down to the shoreline, with an angry Barnamus hot on its wiggling tail.
‘Get back here!’ he barked.
But true to stubborn form, the goat trotted on, finally coming to a halt next to a large lump of driftwood lying on the shoreline, a large lump of driftwood with hands, and ripped clothes …
Barnamus rushed forwards as fast as his aching legs would allow and slid to his knees. It was a young woman, lying face-down in the sand, pale where she hadn’t been burnt black. He gulped, feeling a cold sweat come to chill his roasting forehead. There were vicious red burns running over the right side of her head, where her blonde hair used to grow. What was left of it was matted and singed, sometimes right to the scalp. The burns trailed down her neck, and spread across her right shoulder and upper spine.
He had that awful urge to touch her wounds, as if his brain were having trouble processing their reality. He bit his lip and bent down. As his finger gently grazed her raw shoulder, the body moved and something hissed against the wet sand.
The goatherd had thought her dead, and staggered back. With all thought of his goats forgotten, knowing they would be halfway to Missipine by now, he set about trying to lever her up with his spare arm and his stick. She moaned, crying out weakly as he manhandled her into a sitting position. He tried to lean her against a rock so she could rest. With his eyes screwed shut, so as not to see the burns hovering just inches from his face, he managed to prop her up, letting her head and shoulders slump over her soot-smeared chest.
The goatherd pulled a flask from his satchel and poured a little water into the cupped palm of his dirty hand. He held it under her mouth so she wouldn’t have to move. ‘Drink, girl,’ he croaked at her. ‘Drink it up now.’
For a moment, the girl did not move, and Barnamus feared she had finally drifted off, that he’d killed her with the strain. Then he felt her face move, and felt her mouth on his hand. She choked, managing only a little, but that was a start.
‘What’s your name, girl?’ he asked, trying to peer under her matted hair to see her face. ‘Who are you?’
‘Mmm—’ was all she could manage. Barnamus rubbed his sweaty brow, letting his hat slide back for a moment, wracking his brains. He couldn’t just leave her. But he had the goats to care for. Though she was in a bad way. He scratched an itch deep in his thinning hair, and pondered.
Barnamus moved to the water and brought some back in his hat. He poured it gently over her burns, washing the sand and soot away. He winced as she moaned again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. Barnamus went back to the water three more times, until the girl was soaking wet, but cleaner. Infection and desert tend to go hand in hand. Then he sat with her until she came around again. She tried to lift her head, and the goatherd moved a strand of her hair so she could look at him sideways, through one bloodshot, raw and smoke-poisoned eye. ‘Who are you?’ he asked again.
‘I’m …’ she paused, her eye roving about, taking in her surroundings. ‘Maid.’ It was just a hoarse cough.
‘A maid? On that?’ Barnamus pointed at the smoking wreckage on the far shore. It took a while, but she nodded. The goatherd narrowed his eyes and scratched his chin. ‘What happened?’
The eye closed and the girl shifted against the stone, wincing when she caught her burns. A tear rolled down her grimy cheek. Barnamus could sense her pain. He bit his lip.
‘A boy came,’ she muttered. ‘Started a fire.’
‘A boy?’ Barnamus echoed.
There was another faint shift of the head that might be construed as a nod.
‘Mmm,’ grunted the girl. ‘We asked too much …’
Barnamus scowled. ‘What’s your name, girly?’
With a great amount of effort, wincing and biting her raw lips, the girl raised her head so she could stare at the old goatherd with both eyes. As her matted hair fell back, he couldn’t help but gasp. The fire had kissed the right side of her face too. The raw red burns wandered across her forehead, cheeks and jaw, reaching almost to her nose. Her ear was fused to the side of her scalp, and her right eye was a puffed-up slit through which she could barely see.
‘My name?’ she croaked. ‘Calidae.’
Chapter II
OF HUNTING
16th June, 1867
The soldiers trudged in through the gate with bleary eyes and heavy feet. The smiles with which they had strode out just four days before had long since faded, stolen by fear and replaced with masks of grim resignation and furious resentment. Battle-stunned, they called it.
No soldier likes to be shown their weakness, and that goes double for an officer. Weakness meant losses, and it was painfully obvious that this column of men and women was decidedly shorter and thinner than when it had left. Nobody was more aware of that fact than the good Major Doggard. His eyes, wide and red-rimmed, stared down the spear-straight thoroughfare that led to the door of the Brigadier General’s lodge, square in the centre of Fort Kenaday. His face was devoid of colour save for a few crimson scratches here and there, and his flaming red hair, usually so neatly groomed, was a sweat-soaked mess.
There was a bang as the door to the lodge was thrust open, and a rotund, red-cheeked man came striding out. His body screamed of a lifetime spent in a sedentary occupation, eating food of dubious vitamin content. His thinning hair was slicked back behind his head to cover his baldness. Flapping jowls puffed from blushing cheeks. He had a mean glare in his little eyes, which were like two flecks of coal poked into a red cushion. In short, Brigadier General Linton Lasp, of the Third Frontier, Master of Fort Kenaday, did not look the slightest bit amused.
‘Brigadier General Lasp, Sir!’ Major Doggard swung a very long and very large gun off his shoulder and hefted it into a salute, then signalled for the column of dusty, bloody soldiers to halt.
‘You’re all dismissed,’ ordered Lasp. His words would have practically dripped from his mouth had his to
ne been any oilier. To the Brigadier General, sarcasm was nought but an accent, so natural that contempt might be mistaken for a speech impediment.
He was a high-born officer with a penchant for throwing his ample weight around, and Major Doggard knew this very well. If he could have turned any paler as he stood there, in front of all the people gathered to hear his dressing down, he would have. But by some luck of the Maker, it never came. Lasp simply leant in close and spoke two words low and firmly.
‘Inside. Now,’ he ordered.
The major nodded, saluted, and marched briskly towards the lodge, leaving his soldiers to disperse into the crowds, silent and grim.
Before he turned to leave, General Lasp cast a scowling glance around at the gathered people, refugees from the frontier towns. They were a bother to his operation, as far as he was concerned. His gaze found a particular pair of eyes, eyes he recognised, and he scowled all the more.
Tonmerion glared right back, until the general was forced to turn away.
‘I have no idea why that man despises me so much, but I can assure you that the feeling is utterly mutual.’
Lurker scratched his chin and rumbled. ‘Seems to me like he don’t like havin’ somebody of higher birth than him around. That’s what I reckon.’
Merion shrugged, looking up at the dark shadow of Lurker’s face under his dusty hat. His eyes had that squint to them, the one that told Merion he was deep in thought. Several of his old scars could be spied beneath his collar. Merion had always marvelled how the prospector stayed so stocky, instead of sweating away to nothing under the leather coat and britches he always insisted on. Merion stared at the little scratches in the elbow and shoulder of the coat, and idly wondered where Jake the magpie had got to.
‘Doesn’t make any sense. I couldn’t care less about who he is, or his precious fort. All I care about is why he isn’t letting us leave. We need to be heading east,’ Merion said.
‘Buffalo Snake ain’t givin’ up easy, that’s why. Lasp is worried we’ll all be snapped up as hostages, or worse, cut down. An’ his superiors won’t like that. Not one bit.’
Merion still wasn’t convinced. He shook the dust from his sandy blonde hair, which had been cut and hacked at by his own aunt just that very morning. He still wasn’t sure about the length, or the way it persistently spiked up. Merion scowled. ‘But we’re not even close to the frontier any more.’
Lurker lowered his voice. ‘Mayut’s come further than you think, boy. He’s pushed past Linger Hill already. That’s only two days’ march.’
Merion paused to look at a nearby soldier, hanging limply over the shoulders of another, older man. The soldier was missing an ear, and his eyes, as hollow and cold as winter’s breath, stared vacantly at the dusty ground.
‘Shamans again?’ Merion asked.
Lurker sniffed, smelling the sulphur and ash on their jackets. ‘Probably.’
‘Now I understand that look in their eyes,’ Merion replied, remembering a night not so long ago when he had watched the Shohari shamans in frozen awe. He rubbed his fingers together in his pockets, thinking of magick. ‘Come on, let’s go meet my aunt, before she and Rhin go hunting.’
The prospector grunted his assent. ‘You reckon he can get her out of the fort?’ he asked.
Merion shrugged again. ‘Says so,’ he answered, his voice a little lower, a little harder. Lurker caught it in an instant.
‘Then hopefully we’ll have some fresh meat for dinner.’
Merion’s stomach rumbled in agreement. The food at Fort Kenaday was truly awful, to say the least. Tough old meat, if they were lucky, and watery stew if not. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Lasp had billeted all the ‘refugees’, as he called them, in one cavernous shed, where hammocks were stacked five high and bumped together in the night. Merion could barely keep track of which hammock was his. He had almost lost his bag twice, and a faerie along with it. Rhin had taken to sleeping under the lodge, eavesdropping on all the unsuspecting refugees’ precious secrets. Maybe he hoped this would make Merion curious, and cause him to break his vow of silence. Tonmerion Hark snorted at that.
Lilain was waiting for them at the shed, leaning in the shadows of its doorway, out of the scorching rays of the afternoon sun. The summer in south Wyoming was mercilessly hot. She wore a wide-brimmed hat just like Lurker’s, and was leaning heavily on a crutch Lurker had made for her from some old table-legs. Her knees were still wrapped in bandages, and her face, though on the mend, was a mishmash of bruises and lumps, spanning a spectrum of yellow, purple and green.
Stiffly, Lilain tottered out to meet them, ruffling Merion’s hair when he got close enough. Merion endured her affection with a grimace, and she rolled her eyes. He had become a different boy since his final night in the Serpeds’ company. He was quieter, more withdrawn, as if some of the childhood in him had been cut away. Every night since then, she had prayed silently to the Maker that it was only temporary.
‘Where’s Rhin?’ Merion asked.
‘There,’ Lilain pointed to a barrel over by the fort’s tree-trunk walls, where a faint shiver hid in the shadow.
Merion nodded firmly. ‘Do you really think he knows a way out?’
Lilain shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but my stomach is set on tryin’. It’s getting hard to ignore its rumbling.’
‘And if …’
‘And if so, then we’ll eat well tonight, and leave tomorrow. Maybe that’ll cheer you up, hmm?’
‘Be careful,’ replied her nephew, almost begrudgingly.
‘I will,’ Lilain replied. Merion just nodded again and trundled past her and into the shed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of too many fort-ripe bodies in close proximity.
‘That boy’s not so much a boy any longer,’ commented Lurker.
Lilain watched her nephew leave, and tutted. ‘Shame on you, John Hobble. That boy has been through a lot. He’s lost his father. He’s both drunk and drawn blood. Now he’s lost a friend, and found a murderer instead. He’s only thirteen,’ she admonished him, lightly.
Lurker adjusted his hat, saying nothing.
Lilain broke, letting her shoulders sag and her head hang low. ‘Though you’re right, darn it. He’s not the boy that I met at the railroad station.’
Lurker put a gloved hand on her shoulder, almost hesitantly. ‘He’ll be fine, Lil,’ he offered. ‘Rhin’s waitin’. You sure you’ll be alright?’
‘I need to get these legs movin’, need some fresh air,’ she said, then she took a breath, and patted the hand before hobbling away towards the shadows.
Lurker looked up at the sun, drifting westwards with all the leisure and laziness of an undisputed king. Reaching inside his leather jacket, he fished out a pipe, and then struck a match against his several days’ worth of bristly stubble. The pipe clacked against his teeth as he puffed.
The wind blew then, a strong, warm gust from the desert that whipped up the sand and sent the smoke curling into his eyes. Lurker cursed. As he raised a hand to wipe the grit from his face and the sting from his eyes, a scrap of paper cartwheeled across the dust and flapped against his boot. Lurker trapped it with his heel and bent down to read it. The prospector hummed to himself before picking up the paper and folding it into his pocket. The pipe clacked against his teeth once more.
*
‘Are you sure you’re alright to hunt?’
‘I’ll be fine. Stop asking,’ Lilain replied between grunts.
Rhin stared at the ground. He flickered on the edge of visibility, just in case. ‘Sorry.’
Lilain huffed. ‘Don’t tell me you’re mopin’ too. I already get enough of that from my nephew.’
Rhin narrowed his gaze, though he kept it lowered. ‘I am not moping. Though I would have plenty of right to. It’s been a week, and still he doesn’t say a word to me.’
Lilain wanted to reply with ‘Do you blame him?’, but she held her tongue for once, and kept hobbling.
They were close by the northern edge of
the fort, where the walls narrowed into a point. There was a small gate nestled into the walls. No soldiers were in sight, just a few stableboys and a farrier, who was snoozing in the shade of a stable. It was exactly as Rhin had told her, and it had been like this for two days now.
Rhin led Lilain forward, barely casting a shadow even in the sunlight. She pretended to be wandering aimlessly, staring up at the sky and the spiked walls of the fort. When she looked back down, she had lost sight of Rhin. She kept going, her eyes rushing over the dust and stones. Then she spied a little hand waving towards the gate. The stableboys were distracted by throwing nutshells at the dozing farrier, trying to land one on his lolling tongue. Lilain kept her head down, and ducked as low as her wounds would allow. Even this nervous beating of her heart was far better than lying in a cramped hammock with nothing to do but glare and itch.
Rhin was now climbing to the lock on the small wooden gate, cut from the tree-trunk walls, resting on thick hinges. There was a rattling of sharp steel in the lock’s mouth, and open it sprang. Lilain helped with the bolts, wincing every time one squeaked. She needn’t have worried; the stableboys were far too immersed in their game. Lilain squeezed through, and then they pushed it to, wedging a boulder under its lip so as to make it appear locked. ‘This way,’ Rhin said, becoming a little more visible so she could follow him.
A cluster of buildings sat around the angle of the walls, huddled and bunched as if they were queuing to get inside. A few more stables, another blacksmith’s shed, and a handful of houses was all that stood between them and the scrub of the hills to the north. Rhin licked his lips as his keen eyes roved over the buildings. Most of them were abandoned, on General Lasp’s orders, but the stables still held the running horses for the post, and a few messengermen.
‘Easy,’ snorted Rhin, as he led Lilain a meandering route around the back of a tumbledown house and out behind an outcrop of rock. Before they knew it, they were in the desert, taking in the warm glow bouncing off the sand, their noses full of the smell of the burning earth.