Jack Cloudie j-5

by Stephen Hunt

  Greasy spiced mutton seemed to be the smugglers’ staple diet, leavened by tiny salted fish as small as a child’s fingers. They would stop and consume them in mud huts erected along the roadside for weary travellers to rest their legs.

  When they were on the move again, Jack had to watch that the sling of his camel’s saddle, ornately frayed at the bottom, didn’t catch in the chitin of the sandpedes, the armour of each bony section clacking in and out as the caravan undulated over the dips and rises of the riverside route. The smugglers acting as drovers would walk alongside the pistoning legs, just out of reach, and crack the chitin with rhino horn-handled crops crafted specially for driving sandpedes. They would use the crops liberally, striking in the soft spot between the armour and the lashed-down cargo every time the sandpedes appeared as if they were slowing down, yelling out something that sounded to Jack like, ‘Jebbal Kallgoa!’

  First Lieutenant Westwick rode under the cover of an umbrella-like sunshade, and would demurely turn her head when the fishermen and farmers along the way called out in her direction — wishing her luck in her marriage or other, cheekier, greetings. It was easy to believe, Jack realized, in the lie of their deception. Just humble travellers, slowly journeying through the heart of the empire at a merchant’s pace as they went about their innocent business. It was only when the jarring sight of an airship passed by, distant against a cloudless sky or a jagged mountain range, that reality intruded. Not a Jackelian ’stat, but the alien serrated vessels of the Cassarabians, incongruous both in design and location in these exotic climes. Then the deadly weight of the young sailor’s mission rose like bile in his throat. Four Jackelians, disowned by their own side, dressed up like desert nomads from the cover of some penny-dreadful, sedately wandering through the heart of the enemy’s territory in search of the source of the power driving the most dynamic sect in the empire. And who were the four of them trusting to guide them? Criminal dregs, the beholden creatures of a foreign secret police force that had already been routed by the enemy.

  ‘You thinking about home, boy?’ asked Henry Tempest.

  I was thinking about my brothers. If only they could see me now. They wouldn’t believe it. Jack nodded. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘A marine carries his home with him,’ said Tempest, swigging from one of his canteens — just water to ward off the heat, rather than one of the two chemicals he needed to bring some semblance of balance to his mind. ‘It’s the decking of your airship, the lay of your hammock, the company’s colours and the crew you serve with.’

  ‘Yes, but the ship’s gone,’ said Jack.

  ‘The ship’s mission is here,’ said Tempest, ‘and so are we. Captain Jericho is depending on us. We find the enemy’s celgas and the skipper will be covered in glory. We fail and it won’t matter one perishing way or the other.’ He gestured to the marshy reeds waving in the river breeze. ‘It’s better than the four walls of the stockade, and that’s where I’d bloody be without the old man. Floating in a maximum security isolation tank with a plug up my nose.’

  ‘They’d have hanged me without him,’ whispered Jack.

  ‘So I heard,’ said Tempest. ‘They tried to hang me once, after I got into one of my rages with a provost. The rope didn’t take.’

  Tempest was as rugged as the mountains in the distance. The wind didn’t touch the captain of marines. The sun didn’t burn him. The impossibility of their task didn’t faze him. He was a rock in the sea, waiting for the ocean to beat him with her fury; and the rock just sat there and took it — knowing no dread or doubt.

  ‘Didn’t you feel any fear when they put the noose around your neck?’

  Tempest’s slab-like brow furrowed as if the thought had never occurred to him, as if the act of considering it now was bringing him pain. ‘No. It wasn’t a very scary rope. I should feel more things, I know I should. But they took it away from me when they gave me my strength. I think I was frightened before I was strong, I think I can remember what it was like.’

  ‘Maybe you’re better off not remembering,’ said Jack.

  ‘They made me into a man-of-war,’ said Tempest. ‘That’s what they call our airships and that’s what they called us. I’m the last of them, that I am. And I’m not done yet. Captain Jericho always says that when he comes to the stockade for me. You’re not done yet, Henry Tempest. Did you really break into the vaults of Lords Bank?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack.

  ‘Well, bugger me. It’s true, then. They would have tried more than two ropes on you outside Bonegate if your weight had flaming snapped your noose.’

  From the reeds on their left a series of shouts rose from the wading fishermen. ‘Soldiers! Soldiers!’

  There was a cloud of birds in the air, but as the wheeling, diving creatures drew closer, Jack saw that his eyes had been deceived by perspective. They were far larger than any bird he had ever seen, more like giant lizards, virtually dragons, with human riders saddled behind their long sinuous necks.

  ‘Those aren’t scouts,’ Jack shouted back towards the commodore. All around him, the smugglers were running towards the sandpedes, lifting long spindly-barrelled rifles out from under the bundles of contraband, breaking the rifles and pushing fresh crystal charges into their breaches.

  There was no doubt as to where the creatures were headed. The caravan of smugglers was their target. This was no innocent over-pass. The smugglers raised their rifles, but they didn’t point them at the fast-approaching dragon riders. The four Jackelians on their camels found themselves surrounded.

  ‘Ah now,’ whined the commodore at the smuggler’s leader. ‘Is this how you’re being eminently practical these days?’

  ‘It is for the best, I think, Jared Black,’ said Udal.

  ‘The best for who?’ spat Jack.

  Henry Tempest was half laughing, half gargling as he poured the contents of the red-lidded canteen down his throat.

  ‘Henry!’ shouted the first lieutenant. ‘Stand down. There’s too many of them here!’

  ‘Is that it?’ yelled Tempest. ‘Is that all you’ve got? A bunch of lancers on those flaming flying snakes, they couldn’t take a RAN airship even on our worst day.’ He reached down to the pair of smugglers covering him with their shaking rifles, seizing the tips of both barrels and bending them around into a u-shape. ‘No polish on your brass, no bayonets.’ The captain of marines twisted in his saddle, dismounting and kicking out at the same time, the two smugglers with the crushed rifles collapsing back from the force of the blow. He reached out with his left hand and tore off the leather saddle straps from his camel, grabbing the saddle and using it half as a shield, half as a mace, to lash down another two smugglers running at him with their curved belt daggers. Contemptuously, he kicked one of the fallen jewelled daggers, sending it arcing away into the reeds. ‘I wouldn’t clean my bleeding teeth with that toothpick!’

  The smugglers had seized the reins of Jack’s camel. He wasn’t armed — no slave in the empire was allowed to wear a scimitar or carry a rifle, not even in his supposed merchant master’s name — so he lashed out with his boot, but one of Udal’s men clutched his ankle and pulled him off, others seizing him before he’d even hit the ground. A rifle butt connected with his skull and bright light flared across his vision, followed by a spinning darkness encroaching from the edges of his sight.

  Just as he lost consciousness, Jack thought he saw Henry Tempest with his hand around a drak’s harness, swinging the giant lizard like a fairground ride, other riders swooping down to cast large nets across his massive form.

  The giant’s voice faded into the black. ‘I’m not done yet!’

  Salwa glanced over at a group of Imperial Aerial Squadron officers coming out of a turret towards the execution party before he turned back to Omar. ‘I do hope these four draks are strong enough to rip you and your friend apart, as they are the last ones left alive in the fortress.’ Salwa turned his attention to a half-full spherical container being lugged over by the sailors. ‘Why
do you still have poison left inside there? The womb mages calculated the precise dosage to wipe out the guardsmen’s entire stable.’

  ‘Apologies,’ said the lead officer, raising his face from under his peaked cap. ‘Your men weren’t thirsty enough to drink any more.’

  Omar’s eyes widened at the sight of Farris Uddin’s face. There was a sudden exchange of bullets between the guardsmen dressed as marines and Salwa’s men, the rasp of steel being drawn and the confusion of crashing blades. Omar was rolled about, the draks thrashing around in confusion amongst the melee, the troops controlling them having abandoned the reins for their weapons. His cry of relief at being reprieved from execution by Salwa turned to one of agony as his limbs were twisted beyond their natural tolerance.

  Omar felt a burning pain lash across his arms and legs as the severed straps of the chords that had bound him to the drak whipped across them. Rolling to his feet he caught a scimitar tossed from one of the disguised guardsmen. Boulous rose to his feet beside him, then Omar ducked reflexively as a shadow buzzed overhead, the wind of a passing drak ruffling the hairs on the back of his neck. He barely had time to register a whole talon wing in the air before a series of detonations from the battlements on the other side of the bailey filled the air with dust and flying rock fragments.

  One of Salwa’s men came sprinting towards Omar, his steel blade twisting in an intricate pattern in the air. Omar ducked down and kicked out with both his legs, going under the arc of the scimitar and sending his attacker flying. He rolled along the ground and pulled up into a guard stance to be greeted by the sight of Farris Uddin plunging his blade down into the man’s chest, swift and sure, as merciless as an executioner.

  Omar yelled in frustration as he saw Salwa retreating back into one of the battlement’s turrets with a handful of his men.

  Farris Uddin’s hand fell heavily on Omar’s shoulder as he made to sprint after them. ‘Let them go.’

  ‘But he’s murdered half the guardsmen in the fortress!’

  Farris Uddin pointed down to the corpse-strewn bailey. ‘Look closer.’

  Omar did as he was bid and noticed something strange about the guardsmen’s bodies; their arms were locked behind their backs by ropes, a line of cloth tied around the mouth of each corpse.

  ‘The only guardsmen down there were volunteers,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘To make enough noise that the Imperial Aerial Squadron wouldn’t notice we had already captured the marines they had waiting outside. Salwa was firing on his own men down in the courtyard.’

  ‘You knew the guardsmen were going to be dissolved!’

  Farris Uddin held up the empty vial Omar had seen the grand vizier use to make the Caliph Eternal beg like a whipped dog. ‘I intercepted this, along with the grand marshal’s murdered body and the grand vizier’s men charged with disposing of the evidence. The grand marshal was killed by a poisoned needle thrust into the back of his neck — an assassin’s kill. Everything else, your blade through his gut, was for show. The grand marshal would have known what this vial meant as well as I. Its existence meant that our demise was inevitable.’

  ‘They have the Caliph Eternal addicted, master,’ said Omar. ‘I saw him bowing and grovelling before the grand vizier, as if the ruler of rulers was no more than a slave … The Caliph Eternal, himself.’

  ‘He is not an addict,’ said Farris Uddin, ‘and you saw something very different.’

  Omar started to speak, but Farris Uddin silenced him. ‘Later, boy. There is one truth here. We are now apostate — as rogue and rebellious as any bandits of the Empty Quarter. Boulous, back to the stables. Mount up and follow the talon wing out of the capital. All of you, go, two to a drak if you have to. Any who stay here will be hunted down by the grand vizier’s men and silenced.’

  ‘Where will we go?’ asked Omar.

  ‘We regroup and we run,’ said Farris Uddin. ‘That is our duty now, just to survive.’

  Omar was glad to be off the drak when it landed, the creature’s tail thumping the ground in irritation, resentful of Omar supplanting whoever had been its blood-bonded guardsman. Probably one of their brave volunteers, lying dead in the inner bailey of the fortress. Stable hands came running forward to take the reins dangling from the drak’s snake-like neck, dust from the ground under its four stubby, sharp-clawed feet rising up like a veil of mist around its green scales.

  Omar followed after Boulous and Farris Uddin, vacating the open clearing outside the hundreds of tents so more riders could land. Everyone who had survived the guardsmen’s betrayal had regrouped here — all the planning for a campaign that they had never been called on to execute now put to use in fleeing the capital as fugitives. How long could they survive as a rogue army in the field, raiding for supplies after their stores ran out? That was the question. And how long before the shadow of the Imperial Aerial Squadron’s new airships passed over them with their bomb bays open?

  ‘How long will we be here, Master Uddin?’ called Omar, catching up with the guardsman commander and his retainer.

  ‘We have a period leave of grace,’ said Uddin. ‘The grand vizier likes to announce victories, not defeats. He was set to announce the dissolution of the guardsmen, not their flight intact from the capital. Perhaps the dog will try to claim we have been sent into the field against the Jackelians after all.’

  ‘The grand vizier just has to wait for our supplies to run out, master,’ said Boulous, miserably. ‘An army of foot soldiers might be able to live off the land, but with draks to feed we need the wagoneers of the army supply corps to stay in the field.’

  ‘Your grasp of logistics does my teachings credit,’ said Uddin. ‘Although watch the impact your words might have on the morale of our people.’

  ‘The grand vizier will wish to finish us off out of sight,’ said Omar. ‘He does his work in the shadows.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Uddin, walking up to a large collection of tents covered with netting the same colour as the barren rocky ground they were pegged into. ‘But we have enough supplies to last for one battle — we will just have to choose that one battle wisely. You have heard the old adage that my enemy’s enemy is my friend?’ He opened the flap to the tent. ‘Meet your enemy’s enemy.’

  Omar stared in amazement. Inside were four prisoners tied up against the tent posts: a shaven-headed giant of a man wrapped in tight chains; a statuesque woman with the look of both beauty and danger — one who might almost have passed for a Cassarabian; an old salt-bearded fellow; and a young man who looked about Omar’s age. The faces of the men mottled where skin dye had been rubbed off to reveal a skin as light as a jahani’s, like Boulous.

  Omar caught a movement out of the corner of his eye — from Farris Uddin. The guard commander’s skin was changing colour, darkening to ebony. It moved and flexed as if parasites were rippling under his cheeks and forehead. Omar stepped back in astonishment, the guard commander raising a hand to calm him. Astonishingly, Boulous seemed unconcerned by the changing features of Farris Uddin, as did all the prisoners except the youngest of them, whose look of horror must have mirrored Omar’s own.

  ‘So, Udal the smuggler and Uddin the soldier are one and the same,’ said the salt-bearded prisoner on the floor of the tent. He laughed and looked towards Omar. ‘What’s the matter, lad? Didn’t your officer tell you that he’s a shape-switcher and an agent of the Pasdaran to boot?’

  Omar found the scimitar in his hand, drawn and pointing at the man-thing. ‘Who are you, what are you?’

  It was Farris Uddin’s voice answering, but with an uncharacteristic tone of amusement. ‘Everything he said, everything that you know, and more.’

  ‘Ah, they’re the only Pasdaran who made it through the recent purges,’ said the bearded foreigner. ‘Those who were buried deep in the guards and the army and the jahani, with other faces and identities to hide behind.’

  ‘How perfect,’ snarled the woman, in a tone that indicated she considered it anything but. ‘A smuggler and the guardsman who i
s meant to catch him, poacher and gamekeeper, both rolled into one.’

  Omar remembered the snake tattoo he had seen on Farris Uddin’s neck when he first saw him that had vanished by the time they had journeyed away from Haffa. He looked accusingly at Boulous. ‘And you knew, all this time?’

  ‘Do not be too hard on Boulous,’ said Uddin. ‘I told you when you first arrived at the fortress, I picked my retainer for his discretion.’

  Omar’s head was left spinning by the implications. All this and more. But this man was still the officer who had taken his oath as a guardsman, who had travelled to Haffa Township so as to save him from the fall of the House of Barir. What did it matter if his face could flow like melting candle wax to take on the guise of others? The other faces were still him. A thought leapt unbidden into Omar’s mind. The nagging feeling that there had been something familiar about Farris Uddin when they had first met. Was it possible that Farris Uddin had been in his father’s house before, wearing someone else’s face, or perhaps using a face that would fit in there. Had he been one of the house’s retainers — perhaps even Alim, the rascally nomad turned water farmer who had helped Omar tend the desalination tanks?

  No, he couldn’t have been a permanent fixture, Omar realized. A guardsman might have to travel the length of the empire on the caliph’s business. So might a smuggler or a bounty hunter. But Farris Uddin couldn’t have spent years labouring on the house’s water farms, could he?

  ‘And what will you get for handing us over to the caliph?’ asked the large, bearded prisoner. ‘More of your blessed immortality drug? You haven’t aged a single day since I left the empire.’

  Farris Uddin held up the empty vial that Omar had seen the caliph inject himself with. ‘The Caliph Eternal is not the man he used to be — which, ultimately, is why you are here and why we are here too.’

  ‘You’re too old to be a philosopher, Udal.’

  ‘I’m too old to be anything else,’ said Farris Uddin.

  ‘You told me back in the fortress that it isn’t a drug,’ said Omar. ‘But I saw the Caliph Eternal begging the grand vizier to be given its needle.’