The Shepherd (The Aionach Saga Book 0)

by Staudt, J. C.

  “Especially with bullets in their heads, right?”

  “You think I’m lying, boy? I don’t know anything about bullets. My employees check and re-check my stock, and I triple-check their work before anything is added to the shipping ledger. I hold myself to an exacting standard.”

  “Be that as it may, there’s no way to know what the ledger says until we get to Lottimer and check in with Mr. Vantanible. That won’t happen for another month and a half. How do you figure something like this got past your exacting standards?” It was a fair question. Calistari gave no answer, his discomfort showing in the pallor of his skin.

  “The time it must’a taken somebody to sew a few rounds at a time into dozens of stuffed dolls…” said Andover Mays. “Hate to break it to you, Mr. Calistari, but someone had hold of these for hours. If you really didn’t know about the ammo, it sounds like you got a crooked employee or two.”

  “You think someone planted these without him knowing?” Toler turned to the merchant. “That’s a little hard to believe. Regardless of your claim, the likelihood of you not knowing about this is incredibly small.”

  “I’ve told you. Until a moment ago, I had no knowledge of there being anything of value inside this crate besides the dolls.”

  “Did you make them all yourself? Did you see what went into each one?”

  “I am a trader, Mr. Glaive, not a seamstress.” It was the first time Calistari had ever called him anything more respectful than boy, but Toler supposed nerves were to blame for his sudden cordiality. Jakob’s face had gone from beyond the pale to bright red. “I will remind you that the person or persons to whom this shipment is being delivered may be on their way back at this very minute to make off with the goods.”

  Toler had almost forgotten that Calistari still didn’t know they were the ones who’d broken in. “Listen, Jakob. I was kidding about finding your crate already open. We broke into it ourselves.” Toler noticed Blatcher begin to fidget when he divulged the secret. Calm down, big dway. Don’t blow it now. Keep yourself together. I can pull this off if you keep it together.

  Jakob stared in disbelief. “You shepherds are not the only people who must think me the perfect unsuspecting fool. Do you have so little respect that you would lie about this?”

  “Less than a little,” Toler said. “I don’t respect you at all. I don’t even like you. But since you do business with Vantanible, I do business with you. Now I’m sorry, but evidence is evidence. This is contraband, and it needs to be reported. It looks to me like you’re trying to start some kind of war. Whatever your plan might have been, forget it. You’re not selling any of this. This ammo and these dolls stay right here in this crate until we get to Lottimer.”

  “Selling it is exactly what we should do,” said Jakob. “We should sell it all. And you should help me do it. Split the profits. You know the kinds of people who buy this rubbish. Do you have any idea how much we can make?”

  Toler did have an idea; a pretty good one. But Blatcher and Andover Mays didn’t look happy with the suggestion.

  “You want to make street salesmen out of us?” said Mays.

  “No coffing way,” shouted Blatcher. He glanced down the hallway with a sheepish cringe, then lowered his voice to a sharp whisper. “Of course he wants to sell it. He knows his smuggling is gonna get him skinned. I say the ammo stays with us. Let the boss deal with him when we get to Lottimer.”

  “You’re right,” Toler said. “Jakob, we can’t do anything with those dolls, including selling them to your cousin. You’ll have to tell Vantanible the truth and let him decide what to do.”

  A pained look twitched across Calistari’s face as he considered the implications. His expression dimmed. “Very well. Maynard will be disappointed, but since I had nothing to do with any unregistered goods in my crate, I’m certain that when I explain the situation to Mr. Vantanible and root out whichever of my employees is responsible for this, I will be absolved of any wrongdoing. Now let’s go downstairs and get this covered up.”

  They let Jakob go first down the stairs, the nightcloak fluttering about his calves. He scurried along with surprising deftness for one of his circumference. When they entered the warehouse and came to the blue shipping crate, Calistari faltered on his feet and nearly collapsed.

  “You hoodlums did this?” he said, his voice quavering. He propped himself against the door, candle jittering in its tin holder. When he peered inside and saw the dolls still in their crates, a look of relief came over him. “So you thought I was hiding something, did you? That’s why you raided my personal belongings?”

  “You were hiding something,” Blatcher said. “You agreed to the same terms as every other merchant, Calistari. Don’t act like you didn’t. As supervising shepherd, I have the right to inspect any of Mr. Vantanible’s equipment at any time if I think it’s been damaged or used improperly. That includes suspected smuggling.”

  “You didn’t have to break in,” Calistari said. “All you had to do was ask and I would’ve opened it for you. Since you didn’t, I’ll be adding this little deception of yours to my list of complaints.”

  “It was my idea,” Toler admitted. The break-in had been his idea, and he would take the blame for it.

  “Take it up with Vantanible,” said Blatcher. “I’m sure he’ll give a shit about your complaints when he sees what you’ve been carting around behind his back.”

  Calistari paled again, but he kept up his usual stubborn indifference. “We’ll see, shepherd.”

  “We have to keep this a secret until we get to Lottimer,” Toler said. “If word gets out, the rest of the trip is gonna make the first half look like a picnic.”

  “I got my eye on you now, Calistari,” said Blatcher. “You make sure at least one of us is around every time you open this crate.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jakob said with a noted measure of belligerence. “I don’t need your approval. I’ll access my belongings whenever I please.”

  “Your belongings, huh? So the ammo is yours.” Blatcher look anxious to get a confession out of the merchant - or at least a rise.

  “As I have already explained to you, it is not. This is absurd. Do not overstep your bounds, Mr. Blatcher. Vantanible will hear of this.”

  “Have it your way. But if there’s any sign of you tampering with these dolls before we get back, we’re gonna have a problem.”

  Calistari raised his shoulders, more shudder than shrug. “Perfect.”

  Toler shook his doll until it puked the contents of its burlap skull into his palm. He’d never seen a brand-new bullet before. It was genuine, alright. Polished brass, no sign of scorch marks, no creasing around the edges of the shell casings. He counted six rounds, threw the doll back onto the pile, and let the rounds slide into his pocket. “Collateral,” he said. “Just in case.” The two other shepherds nodded.

  Calistari narrowed his eyes.

  “We all agree, then,” Blatcher said. “Until we get to Lottimer and talk to Mr. V, these dolls don’t exist.”

  The four men concealed their secret with the thick blankets. The merchant closed the doors, replacing the broken lock with a stronger-looking one he’d brought from his room. They left the warehouse together in silence.

  8

  The following day, Calistari opened at market. He’d sold through the portion of his stock intended for Tristol by late afternoon, and he was counting his take when Toler came to check on him. The shepherds had spent much of the day coming and going from the Square between napping and binge drinking. Toler never let himself drink this much on the road. Today, he told himself he missed Reylenn, and he needed it.

  “You’re the one thing in my life that makes sense, and now you’re leaving,” she’d told him the night before the caravan left Unterberg.

  Toler hadn’t known what to say. He was falling in love with her, but he still wanted to go. He loved his work too. He wanted to find the adventure he knew was waiting for him on the sands, and he wanted her to be with
him. My mother always went with my father when he left home. Why can’t you come with me? He hadn’t said it because he already knew the answer. Instead he’d blurted out, “I wish you’d gone to Lottimer with your dad. Then we’d be seeing each other in another month and a half.”

  “And we’d be apart for just as long again after that,” she’d said. “I hate that you have to go.”

  “I just wish you could come with me,” he’d said, though he knew it was impossible.

  “You know my dad,” Reylenn had said. “I’m forbidden from riding with the caravans unless he’s there. He thinks it’s too dangerous.”

  I can protect you just as well or better than he can, Toler had wanted to say. But he hadn’t said that either.

  Calistari looked up when Toler entered his booth. Lengths of copper wire ranging from an inch to several feet in length lay on the table before him, the most common currency used in the city. There were bits of silver jewelry and some gold as well, along with fabrics and various sundry items market-goers had traded to him.

  “Blatcher sent you to put eyes on me, eh?” said the merchant, far too elated with his profits to be annoyed.

  Toler nodded. His head was spinning, and the room was starting to follow. “Looks like you had a good day.”

  “A great one. I’ll be ready to move on tomorrow morning. I’ll consult with the other merchants tonight to determine whether we’ll stay another day.”

  “Good for you.” Toler grasped the door frame, mesmerized by the glinting trails of daylight that were spiraling off the merchant’s money.

  “While you’re here, I need you to do something for me,” Calistari said.

  “Can’t. Well, nevermind. Make it quick. I’m sorta off the clock.” Toler laughed, cheerful and nauseous all at once.

  “You and your ilk are far better at this than I am,” Jakob said. “As you know, we left Unterberg a man short. Then Korley Frittock was killed on the way here.”

  “I do know that, yeah,” said Toler. He belched open-mouthed, swaying in the doorway.

  Calistari blanched. “Thank you... for that. As I was saying. It would be advisable to hire another man for our crew, to take Korley’s place. Here is the remainder of Mr. Frittock’s pay. If you’ll kindly take this across the way there to the office and inquire about a replacement, I would be much obliged. I’ll check in with you later to make sure you’ve done as I asked.”

  When Toler took his hand off the door frame, the floor tried to somersault away from him. “The rest of Korley’s pay should go to his family. You know he’s got a wife and four kids?”

  Jakob flicked a tongue over his parched lips and gave Toler a remorseful look. “I know. But there are no regulations stating that the deceased are owed compensation for work left unperformed at the time of their deaths.”

  Toler stared back at all three of Jakob. “No, there aren’t. I just thought you were a reasonable man.”

  “Reasonable... Am I not generous? You’ve been paid well above the normal fee provided you by the company, haven’t you?”

  “You’re generous when it comes to saving your neck. What I’m doubting… is your integrity.” Toler was proud of himself for stringing two sentences together with his head whirring like it was.

  “I’m very much aware that my integrity is at stake, Mr. Glaive. That much is thanks to the contents of my crate. If I were required to pay every dead shepherd after the fact, I’d have an army of corpses on my payroll. Now, if you please…”

  Toler was starting to hate being called Mr. Glaive just as much as he’d hated boy. It wasn’t the term itself - it was Jakob’s smug condescension. “You’re a bastard.” Everywhere Toler looked, things blurred like a wet painting caught in the rain.

  “Think what you will, Mr. Glaive. Mr. Frittock’s family will receive the pay due him until the date of his death. No more, no less. Now please, take this to the office--”

  Toler held up a hand to refuse the merchant’s task. It was the hand he’d been bracing himself with. The merchant twisted away, and there was only the daylight shining on the stark brick walls of the Square.

  9

  The caravan’s time in Tristol came to an end the following day. They left the safe haven of Tristol Village Square and toiled into the wastes again, this time rounding the southern tip of the Clayhollows toward the old river town of Rills. The shepherds had taken part in their intended share of drunken debauchery, but Toler didn’t remember much after Blatcher and Mays dragged him back to his room. Calistari had gone to the personnel office himself, and there were two new shepherds in their crew as a result: Ort Raukel, a strapping man in his late thirties who wore his leathers tight and his coal-black hair in a slick ponytail; and Drackard “Drack” Ingan, a man of about the same age but less in height, weight, apparent skill, and remaining hair.

  Toler noted the feeling of tension between Calistari and his shepherds as they set out on this leg of the journey. Blatcher took to lagging behind the flatbed, whispering his derision to Andover Mays. As always, the quiet veteran sat smoking, nodding his solemn agreement, while the merchant grew ever more agitated at the mutterings of his shepherds. Toler knew Blatcher and Mays didn’t trust Jakob to keep the secret, and they still didn’t know whether the bullets were his. On top of that, the two new shepherds were complete strangers; they didn’t even know each other, and that made them immediate outcasts from the group. As for himself, Toler couldn’t wait until they reached Lottimer. He wanted to watch Calistari squirm like a fat nightcrawler on the end of Vantanible’s hook.

  They were two days outside Tristol, well into the afternoon, when the caravan came to a halt. Another pissing contest between Blatcher and Calistari had gotten them off to a late start that morning, and they were dead last in the caravan today.

  “Glaive. Go see what’s wrong,” Blatcher yelled.

  Figures. No initiation rites for the new dways - I’m still the youngest. Toler goaded his horse into motion and galloped along the line, counting the flatbeds like cars on a passing train. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, he finished, as he reached the front. This is a big one. He had known it was one of the larger caravans he’d shepherded, but he hadn’t realized it was this big. The western route was popular with the merchants. Trading goods through big port cities like Lottimer tended to be lucrative. That was why Nichel Vantanible had gone there ahead of time. That was why he was there now, waiting for them.

  Lodd Wallingford raised his chin when he saw Toler, and rode over to meet him. A few others were riding up from further back to see what was going on.

  “What’s happening up here?” Toler asked.

  Lodd pointed. “They found something. A cave. Up there in the rocks.” He was a few years older than Toler, with wavy hair that hung in pale yellow wisps about his ears and neck, and a layer of beard that was as dark as wet sand.

  “So they’re stopping the whole train to go spelunking?”

  “Getting some shade, they said.”

  Toler rolled his eyes. “It’s coffing hot. They should learn to deal with it like the rest of us.”

  A scream came from within the cave, then stopped abruptly.

  A few men laughed, thinking someone was playing a joke, but a long time passed and there was no further sign from within. Tension hung in the air, thicker than the heat itself.

  Toler swabbed his forehead with his hood-scarf, temerity taking hold of him. He felt like a rock again, and wasted time was the wave that was rushing in against him. “Come on,” he told Lodd. “We’re gonna go see what’s in that cave.”

  The shepherds were supposed to ride in twos whenever they left the train for any reason, but Toler snapped his reins without waiting for a response. Lodd rode after him, and they tethered their horses with the others near the mouth of the cave. Toler took a javelin in one hand and a torch in the other, and they drew up beneath the opening and listened to the thrumming from within. It was a hollow sound, and deep, like a thousand whispering insects speaking wordles
s in the dark. It was that sound, and the gush of cold air whipping their manes back and bristling the hair on their faces, that gave Toler pause. Something was alive in there, he was certain; the sense was undeniable. There was life within the men who’d gone before them, but there was something else, too.

  His torch guttered as they strode into the black. A damp, moldy smell clung to him and made his breath catch in his throat. Lodd had gotten a whiff too; Toler heard him cough up phlegm and spit. The wind remained steady as they went, chilling the sweat off their skin and blowing tears back along their eye sockets like raindrops on a moving window. The path was flat, curling slowly downward and widening into an open cavern that rose again before it dead-ended on the other side.

  The floor along the bottom of the cavern was brown and glistening in the torchlight, a gigantic mud puddle made of all the runoff that had collected here. Toler halted, but Lodd kept coming until he passed him, not looking back as he plodded the rest of the way down the slope. He leaned over to examine the sludge, then took a tender step, letting his toe fall gently into the mud.

  Only it wasn’t mud.

  Toler may have been young, but one advantage he had over most other shepherds was some semblance of an education. Part of coming from an affluent family meant there were always books to keep him company, and as a result he’d managed to become somewhat literate. What he’d learned from reading, while paltry, was far greater than the average Aionach-worlder could boast. One of his favorite books was an old volume his brother told him came from some school before the Heat. It was called Biology. In it, he’d read about the vast array of creatures who lived in the Aionach, both sentient and otherwise. Everything from cotterphages to brengens, gargants to sanddragons, murrhods to amarpids; he had at least a basic understanding of them all. That knowledge only came in handy on occasion, but whenever he ventured off the beaten path, those occasions seemed to come about more often. This was one of them.

  “Lodd. Lodd, LODD!” he shouted, too late.