The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘I wonder if your clan’s sorcerer would mind if we visited tomorrow?’ sighed Cassandra.

  ‘I would lay here with you for a full season,’ said Alexamir, ‘until those who rode past outside called me Prince of Idles, rather than Prince of Thieves. But that will not heal you again, and that is what I would have.’

  ‘You heal me,’ she insisted. ‘Just by being here.’

  Alexamir gathered her clothes from where they had been thrown around the floor and placed them by her side. ‘I will carry you forever . . . but I can only carry you so far. For the rest of the journey, I fear we must both place our faith in Temmell.’

  Cassandra kept her misgivings to herself and tugged her clothes back on. Old Nonna returned to the tent just as Alexamir scooped the now redressed Cassandra out of the bedding furs. She glanced at them both and wrinkled her nose. This old woman could see through to the truth of a situation like a hot blade parting butter. ‘What is this? Courting? It is time to prepare supper, not time to smell wild tulips on passion’s slopes.’

  ‘We need to leave for a while, Aunt. But the journey will take us no further than Temmell’s presence.’

  ‘In that case, take a dip through the stream on the way back, Alexamir Arinnbold. I will not share my tent with the stench of that gold-skin’s dark sorceries.’

  ‘His power is pledged to the Great Krul,’ said Alexamir.

  ‘Am I so old that I am blind, boy? That much I know. But you borrow such forces at your peril. Never in my day.’

  ‘He will help heal Lady Cassandra,’ protested the strapping nomad.

  Nonna turned her beady eye firmly on Cassandra. ‘You think so? He has a right to cure who has a heart to help. Where is the heart in that foreign-born goat? You will struggle to find it.’

  ‘Temmell’s heart has been filled by the gods. He is wise.’

  Nonna shook her head in dismay. ‘What you call wisdom I call cunning. Temmell lusts after the souls of others to fill the void the gods carved in his own. Already the rogue has his tendrils into Kani Yargul. Nothing good will come of you owing that creature a blood debt.’

  Cassandra suspected nothing at all would come of this, but she didn’t wish to disappoint Alexamir. Better he found out the trickster’s limits himself.

  ‘Do not listen to Nonna,’ said Alexamir as he carried Cassandra to a horse outside. ‘Where Temmell is concerned, our clans’ women give too much weight to Madinsar and her witch riders.’

  ‘You believe the witches speak from jealousy?’

  ‘It is more than a matter of envy for Madinsar,’ said Alexamir. ‘Hers is the hatred of blood feud. Madinsar was mother to a young man called Chinua. Chinua rode as head of one of the clans which opposed Kani’s rise to be Krul of all Kruls. Chinua was slain by Kani Yargul in combat. They rode out into the hills to settle the matter between themselves, and Kani came back with Chinua’s head in a sack.’

  ‘Then surely Madinsar should hate the Great Krul? His was the blade that murdered her son.’

  ‘You do not understand our ways. It is natural for clan leaders to desire to be Great Krul of all the clans, just as it is natural for other clans to resent a fledgling king like an unbroken horse resents its first rider. Few men ever manage the feat. As soon as one Krul looks like uniting enough clans to become a danger to the rest, the remaining leaders fear for their power and join forces to unseat the Great Krul. It was Temmell’s advice that helped our Great Krul gain his seat – setting one clan against another, forging and breaking alliances with a skill unsung in our histories. Without Temmell’s magic, the Great Krul would not sit on his throne and Madinsar’s son would still live.’

  In other words, they blamed what they could not understand, rather than that which was familiar. The witch’s attitude didn’t seem particularly sensible to Cassandra. In the Imperium, you blamed the head of a rival house for your setbacks, not the enemy’s advisers, who were expected to be the best that could be bought. Well, you’ll spend the rest of your life with these people, lady. You had best learn how they think sooner rather than later . . . prejudices and superstitions included.

  To Cassandra’s surprise, she and Alexamir headed away from the tented city first, leaving the camp’s outskirts behind them. Instead, they set their horses in the direction of the shocking sight which had greeted Cassandra on her arrival here. Out on the plains, between a series of low, rolling hills, lay a great litter of aircraft remains, a veritable graveyard of the huge merchant carriers that had once crisscrossed the heavens. Cassandra had camped in a few of the carriers’ wrecks on the way here, rotting canvas and wooden fuselage like the bones of whales. The lack of high altitude trade winds here, the stretch of the plains, and the dearth of friendly cities willing to sell fuel to aircraft made Arak-natikh a fiendishly difficult crossing. Many were those who ran out of fuel and crashed. But these wrecks before her now were different. Newer, not yet decayed down to uselessness. Everything hid under a sea of camouflage netting. The usual fate of downed carriers was to be stripped of metals. Such plunder ended up as nomad spearheads and blades. But the scope of industry under the netting indicated a different fate for these crashed carriers. As they drew closer, Cassandra’s ears echoed to the banging of blacksmiths’ anvils, the acrid smell of furnaces making her horse whinny. She passed scaffolds erected around aircraft, seamstresses cutting away and storing the fabric fuselage, carpenters carefully sawing through plywood frames. Trains of horses dragged away the fruit of the nomads’ labour on wooden sleds. These merchant carriers had been virtual city-states of the air. Such work was beyond the ability of one or two clans. Only a Great Krul could muster the resources to build this . . . an aircraft works in the heart of the plains. Stripping downed craft and rebuilding the frames as smaller, more manageable craft. Some of these crashed carriers were six-hundred rotors large. Six hundred engines available for repair and re-use. That was a lot of blades and crossbow bolts to forsake. But none of Arak-natikh’s neighbours would believe the nomads capable of fielding a skyguard of their own, not in a thousand years.

  All this certainly explained Alexamir’s familiarity with, and lack of fear around the kite they had stolen to escape Rodal. What’s Temmell’s involvement in this place, I wonder? Is this part of his grand strategy for the grass king?

  ‘Temmell is working here today?’ asked Cassandra.

  ‘Today. Every day. There is little the sorcerer does not know about the creation and flight of these wooden pigeons,’ said Alexamir.

  ‘Your man seems very versatile in his magic.’

  ‘He is Temmell,’ said Alexamir, as if that should answer everything.

  Those are his words, not yours. A suspicion arose in Cassandra. ‘You’ve been trained to fly, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have only started to learn,’ said Alexamir. ‘I am not yet such a fine flier as I am a rider. But the day will soon arrive when I am master of the air. After all, the rice-eaters easily swoop on their cold winds, and they are a dull, mealy-mouthed people. Should not the mighty Alexamir be able to fly a thousand times better than the most skilful Rodal has to offer?’

  ‘There are no winds to catch out in Arak-natikh.’

  ‘We have horses to ride here,’ said the nomad.

  Of course you do. So where will the clans be riding its new wooden pigeons, I wonder? ‘I can fly as well as anyone.’ Just not with pedals anymore.

  ‘I have seen you fly and fight in the air. I know that is no boast. But with Temmell’s blessing, you shall again climb into a wooden pigeon using your own legs.’

  ‘I’m not one of these crashed merchant carriers, Alexamir. It will take more than a little sawing and sewing to give me back my mobility.’

  ‘We shall see.’

  They came across a building in the centre of the works that resembled a circular wooden long-hall, built entirely out of salvaged planking. Canopies and awnings were pegged out around it, shading tables and blueprints from the sun. Scribes sat at some of the tables, balanced on l
ong benches, working quietly at their scrolls and ledgers. From what Cassandra had seen so far, the ability to read and write was a rare skill among the nomads. Being able to design and build aircraft an even rarer one, though, lady. Alexamir enquired within the building for Temmell, and finding him elsewhere inside the works, left Cassandra sitting on her horse while he trotted off to bring the sorcerer back. The grass was brown and dry in the mottled shade of the camouflage netting, but Cassandra’s mount chewed at it happily enough. She saw the door to the long-hall swing open. Out of it emerged Sheplar Lesh, his legs slowed by a heavy length of weighted chain between his ankles. His hands were free, though.

  Sheplar started as he saw Cassandra up on her steed. ‘When I saw you on the horse, for a moment I thought . . .’

  ‘No. I am still broken. In the saddle is the only place where I am half-useful.’ Cassandra nodded down towards the skyguard’s leg-irons. ‘But I see I am not the only one here with restricted mobility.’

  ‘The usual fate of foreigners who come across this works by accident is death,’ said Sheplar. ‘But they hope to use me. Helping them build flying wings in the style of Rodal. Training their blue-skinned barbarians to fly.’

  ‘You will not have a choice in the matter.’

  ‘I always have a choice. I do not fear death.’

  ‘The Nijumeti will not hesitate.’

  ‘Neither will I.’

  ‘So, it seems our positions are reversed,’ said Cassandra. ‘You were once free and my jailer. And now . . .’

  ‘You think yourself freer than I? There are plenty of Rodalian women here taken as saddle wives in nomad raids. Some of them are out on the scaffolds unpicking the carriers. Talk with them of their so-called freedom and see how they feel about the matter.’ ‘I have Alexamir’s word.’

  ‘The word of a Nijumeti? As cheap as grass, here.’

  ‘Alexamir has proven his words with deeds. Besides, I have nowhere else to go, Sheplar Lesh. I have no place inside the Imperium anymore, nor my house. Not like this. By Vandia’s code, I should end my life. I have lost my home as surely as you have lost yours.’

  ‘I am sad you believe that is your path. I still have hope.’

  ‘Hope of what?’

  ‘To escape and carry word back to Rodal of the Great Krul’s secret schemes out here.’

  ‘I do not think much of your chances.’

  ‘Help me and they will be greater.’

  ‘I am no use to you and your friends back in Weyland as a hostage now. The emperor will not pay a single copper coin for the return of a cripple such as I. West is as good as east to me, now. I shall stay here.’

  ‘I hope you change your mind, little bumo, for both our sakes. When you do, seek me out.’

  ‘Another lost hope.’

  She watched as the Rodalian was marched off towards the furnaces by two bare-chested smith’s apprentices where a half-disassembled engine lay spread across the grass. The Rodalian passed Alexamir, who arrived riding alongside Temmell. Alexamir swung off his horse and helped Cassandra dismount from hers, carrying her inside the wooden round-house. Cassandra noted how tight Alexamir held her. How warm his hands were. Not much recompense for losing my legs, but it’s something. Inside, she stared up at a roof lined with transparent canopies from the downed carriers, admitting a flood of light. Wooden aircraft models rotated from the rafters, turning on the ends of lines. A distillery bubbled against the wall, extracting fuel from sacks of grain. There was a bitter oily stench to the room which suggested the nomads had yet to develop an effective method of mass-producing engine grade ethanol.

  ‘So,’ said Temmell, ‘what business do we have this day, Alexamir? Are you here to demand to be made a squadron leader of the Great Krul’s new skyguard again? Such matters are out of my hand, as I explained to you last time you sought me out here.’

  ‘It is your sorcerous mastery over flesh that I would have you grant me, mighty Temmell. We spoke of it the other day. Do you not remember?’

  ‘With so many calls on my time, how could I be expected to?’ said Temmell, gazing at Cassandra as though he’d come across a lost pair of socks. ‘Ah yes. The far-called daughter of Vandia.’

  ‘You speak of the woman who will be my wife.’

  ‘So you say.’ His intense eyes twinkled at Cassandra. They were grey, like slate, and flecked with the same gold as his smooth skin. ‘A fine woman. I note she has the beauty of the Vandians. It is common variety inside the empire. But then, the Imperium steals so many fine-looking young slaves of both sexes from the world, as well as taking the cleverest minds. It is as though Vandia is determined to breed a race of gods to enjoy its wealth.’

  ‘You are a healer as well as all of this?’ asked Cassandra.

  ‘This?’

  ‘This aircraft works. Matters of flight. Your scheme, I presume.’

  ‘You have seen the Great Krul. What do you think? And there is very little I do not understand about matters of flight,’ said Temmell. He threw back his cloak and what Cassandra had first taken as a hunched back unfurled into a pair of white feathered wings.

  Cassandra gaped at him in amazement. No wonder Nonna called him a creature. ‘You can fly!’

  ‘You might say it comes naturally to me. At higher altitudes, where gravity’s touch bears down as light as the weight of the air itself, I soar. Taking off from these grasslands is usually the issue. But give me a mountain slope with a good headwind . . .’

  Cassandra had heard such flighted peoples existed, but the empire had never conquered a province with a population so many twists of the spiral removed from the common pattern. It was little wonder the superstitious nomads had spared this curious traveller, instead of cutting his throat. A greater wonder Temmell hadn’t ended up being displayed in a cage as a freak before he got here, however.

  ‘My wings were a gift,’ said Temmell. He rubbed his dark curls with a measure of frustration, folding his wings back on themselves, making them small enough to cover again with his cloak. ‘Some days I even come close to remembering from whom.’

  ‘Do remember now the healing we talked of yesterday?’ said Alexamir.

  ‘Yes, yes, that at least is not presently fogged,’ said Temmell.

  Cassandra gazed at the traveller with a degree of trepidation. Is he mad? He truly is insane if he thinks he can fix me.

  ‘You look like someone I knew, once, Vandian. Was it the Duchess of Ayak, or perhaps one of my daughters? My loins have produced so many children over the years.’

  ‘I knew my father before he died. And you are not he.’

  ‘Your father died badly, I can see that in your eyes.’

  ‘My father died a hero of the empire.’ Betrayed by my grandmother for the crime of loving my mother.

  ‘Yes, one of my daughters. But which one? So many names.’

  Alexamir lay Cassandra down on a cot in the corner of the room, rough woollen blankets that had seen better days making her neck itch. ‘You would want to heal one of your daughters, would you not?’

  ‘No, no,’ muttered Temmell. ‘Not one of mine. Not Gisi. Not Ashavani or little Missa.’ For a moment she thought the mercurial traveller would refuse to inspect her, but Temmell’s moods seemed to change with each second. He drew closer, kneeling by the cot. ‘Roll over Vandian. Expose your spine for me so I may make my diagnosis.’

  Cassandra pulled herself over and lifted up the linen tunic. She craned her neck to see the trickster rub his hands together. Then Temmell placed both palms flat against the bottom of her back. His golden skin felt as smooth and cold as porcelain, and she grunted as he pushed against her vertebrae.

  ‘Yes, I feel the break. Just here. This was no riding accident.’

  ‘My flying wing was shot to pieces,’ said Cassandra. ‘We crashed escaping to the steppes.’

  ‘You can fly? Alexamir spoke the truth to me, then. You are of the celestial caste. You are far too young to be any pilot of the empire’s legions.’

  ‘I w
as trained to fly a helo, flying wing and patrol ship,’ said Cassandra. ‘By the finest aces of the legion. And I am granddaughter of the Emperor Jaelis Skar.’

  Temmell chortled. ‘Yes, but there are so many of those rattling around the harem’s corridors. For all of Vandia’s size and power, it is just another family business. But at least you were born to the right family for your empire. The only one that counts. Currently.’

  ‘You know a lot about us, for a race I have never seen or heard of inside the empire.’

  ‘Oh, I have forgotten far more. You might say I am as broken as you in my own way. But I still retain fragments. The knowing of things is a more reliable blade than any Vandian duelling dagger.’

  ‘You have the power to heal her?’ asked Alexamir. He sounded even more desperate in the need for a cure than Cassandra. Despite herself, Cassandra felt surprised. Her mother Helrena had cared for her. Duncan and Paetro and Doctor Horvak had protected her and would have given their lives for her. But Cassandra had never experienced a passion for her like this inside the empire. Any suitors there would have seen only the wealth of her house’s sky mines, the blood imperial of the match. But Alexamir had risked his life to rescue her from Rodal, not for her position or her house or her wealth. Just for who she was. And he had continued protecting her when she was as much use as a chocolate cauldron on a camp fire. That’s a rare thing to find in the world, lady. Perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.