The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘So you bring it out of Hellin.’

  ‘I can see you’ve never visited my country. I’m a poor bog-walker, and a poor bog-walker likes a good piece of marsh. It’s versatile stuff, marsh. Slippery, sucking, complex soil. Good for drowning every horde to wander in from the steppes. And the ones who don’t get sucked under the bogs end up dying from the bites of our very friendly snakes and insects. Poison and fever and marsh. And Brean Luagh. At your service. But no rubber trees. That I source from Morynia. Is the master of the house in?’

  Cassandra nodded in the direction the trickster had left.

  ‘He’s particular about people disturbing him in those rooms. Who knows what he does in there, eh? Would you be so good as to tell Master Temmell when he reappears that Brean Luagh is in town and requests the pleasure of his company for a little haggling? Are you sure you’re not from Persdad?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Temmell is an interesting fellow; a golden eagle among grass mice. Have you ever met anyone like him out your way?’

  I don’t recall mentioning what my way is. ‘People are different wherever you travel.’

  ‘And isn’t that what makes the journey so interesting? Well, there it is. Might I have your name, it seems awful distant to be leaving without knowing it?’

  ‘Cassandra.’

  ‘A name as lovely as yourself. I shall bid you a farewell, then, Cassandra. Perhaps we shall meet again before I take my leave of the Nijumeti.’

  Cassandra shrugged. ‘I’m not going very far.’ At least, not much further than a ten-minute walk.

  Cassandra was back inside the family tent when Kerge appeared at its opening. ‘Where is the manling, Alexamir?’

  ‘Away at council with their grass king and what passes for a court sorcerer in these parts,’ said Cassandra. Training him to commit suicide for me. ‘You are not chained?’

  ‘Madinsar does not chain her servants. She would see a thrall attempting escape the day before the slave knew of it themselves.’

  ‘She has the future sight you possessed?’

  ‘Madinsar has it,’ admitted the gask. ‘I never thought to meet a common-pattern female with our people’s talent, but she possesses it. As strong as any among the Elders of Quehanna.’

  ‘You almost sound happy about your discovery,’ said Cassandra.

  ‘She is working with me, helping me recover my golden mean.’

  ‘That sounds uncommonly kind of her.’

  ‘Naturally, it is for her benefit rather than my own,’ said Kerge. ‘Madinsar wishes to regard the branches of the great fractal tree. She seeks to shape it, as I once did.’

  ‘Then you are a pawn on the game-board rather than a patient on the surgeon’s table.’

  ‘You may see what Madinsar is yourself. She wishes to meet with you.’ Kerge glanced around the empty tent. ‘Is the old womanling not here? The nomad’s aunt?’

  ‘Nonna is out penning her goats before nightfall and the wolves come prowling,’ said Cassandra. ‘I am no slave here, Kerge. My status is that of tent-guest. You do not need to ask any permission save my own.’

  ‘Then you will see Madinsar?’

  ‘Only if you carry me to the pony tethered outside.’

  The gask bore her outside, the spines of his skin resting uncomfortably against hers. After a short ride in the cooling night air, they entered Madinsar’s tent together. It proved to be a place of bright colours; a soft richness about its incense-scented space, cushions, rugs and blankets. That surprised Cassandra. Tapestries hung from the roof, ancient stories told in pictograms, works that must have taken multiple lifetimes to weave. Cassandra could see this place belonged to a person of importance among the Nijumeti. Unlike Alexamir’s tent, the witch rider’s was lit by a chandelier studded with orange sun crystals. Left outside for a day, the crystals absorbed the day’s light, and then gently emitted what they had stored when placed in darkness. The wheel twisted above her, pulsing softly in rainbow hues which added to the ethereal quality of the tent. Yes, all the trappings of a holy place. The high priestess of the witch riders emerged from an antechamber to welcome them. A slight smile pulled at the corners of Madinsar’s mouth. ‘Welcome, Lady Cassandra Skar of Vandia.’

  Cassandra glanced around. ‘Is Nurai not here?’

  ‘She travels away from the camp presently.’

  ‘Good.’ I have enough problems in the camp without Alexamir’s old admirers trying to find extra ways to kill me.

  ‘Nurai has loved Alexamir Arinnbold for as long as she has known him,’ said Madinsar. ‘You can understand how unhappy she feels at your presence here.’

  ‘She claims to have seen my future.’

  ‘Only clouded dreams. It is never a good thing to see your own fate too clearly. Happiness is blindness. Witch riders are rarely happy. It is the curse of our gift.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Happy?’ Madinsar snorted. ‘Worries lap around my mind like the waters of the salt sea. Such waters leave me no room for personal concerns. I have seen dark futures, terrible futures. The end of all things.’

  ‘Pieces decay: the board is eternal.’

  ‘A wise enough saying. But I have seen the board on fire. Many of us have. And not just here.’ She glanced at Kerge.

  ‘That is the truth,’ said the gask. ‘Our elders have scryed disturbing glimpses of what may come to pass. It is as though the branches of the great fractal tree narrow before us. The paths diminishing down to a single, terrible, lonely future. An autumn followed by winter. Darkness eternal.’

  ‘When witch riders talk of this, we are called foolish old women too close to death, women who dream only their own end,’ said Madinsar. ‘But now I discover that the tales of a forest people beyond the mountains are true. Males and females with the dream-sight. And I find the witch riders share the same dreams with the gasks, or should I say nightmares.’

  ‘The world is filled with wars and conflict and death,’ said Cassandra. ‘I don’t need your gift to understand that. Just reading any one of a thousand history texts is enough.’

  Madinsar shook her head. ‘Our gods do not give us the gift of future-sight through the gasks’ forest, but through the stream with a million tributaries. Kalu the Apportioner’s stream. And you are right, its waters bubble and froth with the rapids of mankind’s passions. How could it be otherwise? But witch riders do not dream of rapids. We dream of nothing at all. It is a darkness more absolute and terrifying than anything an ungifted could understand. Imagine you woke one morning and discovered the sun has not risen and there were no more stars in the sky. Only cold and endless winter. The grass of the plains turned black, the very air we breathe as thin and frozen as daggers. This is our future.’

  ‘It is close to what I saw before I lost my gifts,’ said Kerge, miserably.

  ‘You have not lost the gift,’ said Madinsar. ‘There is a rock slide in the water damming your flow. The rocks belong to you. They are yours to remove.’

  ‘I am trying.’

  ‘Rather, we are chipping at them together,’ said the witch rider.

  ‘Nurai claims I will bring death and misery to the clans,’ said Cassandra.

  ‘Misery to her, perhaps. Maybe to us all. I dream of defeat to the south of the steppes, or victory north of the plains. Your friend Temmell means to smash us upon the peaks of Rodal. Matters will not end well there for our people.’

  ‘Temmell is not my friend.’

  ‘I sense his scent upon you, girl. Like the brand of ownership on a steer. He has burnt into you and do not deny it.’

  ‘Temmell says he will heal me.’

  ‘As I heal a roast chicken by digesting it and making it part of my flesh?’

  Cassandra snorted. ‘I am not yet healed.’

  ‘I need no gift to see that. The gask carried you in here, girl. Let me carry you out.’

  ‘Temmell’s cost I understand. What is to be your price?’

  ‘Yet to stand revealed to me. But
we will need to pay its tally . . . all of us who are willing. Even those who are not. A dead river has only one course.’

  ‘That sounds terrifying,’ said Cassandra.

  ‘Then you sit upon my seat, now, girl. It may soon be impossible to choose between life and death. We may only be able to choose what we are willing to die for. Or who.’

  ‘I shall try to give you your answer when you fully have your question,’ said Cassandra.

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Madinsar. ‘I am sure you will.’ There was a measure of sorrow in her voice heavier than anything Cassandra had heard before. Madinsar lifted Cassandra up from the cushions, assisted by Kerge. Together, they bore her back to the pony tied outside.

  Brean Luagh approached his line of covered wagons. He attracted a hopeful bob of the head from one of his men perched on the driver’s seat of the lead wagon. There was a fire to the side, the rest of the traders and his family warming an iron pot filled with vegetables and local game. The driver had a rifle nestled in his lap like a cat for the stroking. Mael was a cousin. Not a particularly clever one, it had to be said. But you have to work with what you are given. ‘Do we have a price for the goods?’

  ‘That we do not,’ said Brean. ‘The golden eagle is off with his beakers and experiments. But we’ll make a deal soon enough. After all, how many other traders do you see out here? A profitable trip, the gods willing.’ Brean walked around to the rear of the wagon and untied its canvas cover before hauling himself into the back. ‘Keep your eyes peeled. A little warning if one of our Nijumeti friends comes around wanting to swap goats for guns.’ He yanked the bales aside, exposing a pile of wooden crates. These he dragged back, exposing the wagon’s floor. Brean removed a small steel key from the ammunition pouch on his belt, slotting it into what looked to be a knot of wood. A turn to the left and the hidden mechanism answered with a click, the concealed panel lifting up an inch. He slipped his fingers below and slid the small hatch fully up.

  Mael stuck his head through the wagon’s front curtain. ‘You’ll be bringing the guild-mark down on our heads one day with that contraption.’

  ‘Only natural for the Guild of Radiomen to be a little miffed,’ said Brean, removing the brick-sized radio set. ‘Them with holds filled with batteries and secrets and us with the whole caboodle squeezed down to this. Hardly seems fair . . . to the likes of them.’

  ‘Miffed won’t be the word for it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, boy. Have a little faith in King Marcus and his farcalled friends. If I’m any judge of character, the long guilds won’t be “long” for this part of the world.’

  ‘What are you saying, Brean Luagh?’

  Brean activated the radio, just as the Vandians and Weylanders had shown him. His answer a swine-like squeal of static. ‘Why, that in a fight, you always back the man carrying the biggest blade.’ He lifted out the code book and located the day’s date in the table, along with the associated pass-codes. ‘So let’s find out how much the biggest blade is willing to pay for the safe return of an emperor’s granddaughter.’

  ‘The lass with the price on her head is here?’

  ‘No, you great idiot, the other girls. Her three beautiful noble-born sisters we’re expected to report for bleeding free.’

  ‘No need to be offensive,’ sniffed Mael.

  ‘What a sensitive soul you are today. The high-born lass is out in the aircraft works with Temmell himself.’

  ‘Never thought the young wizard was particularly interested in the fillies.’

  ‘You’d make an exception for the granddaughter of the big man, though,’ said Brean.

  ‘She looks like her picture?’

  ‘That she does. A little sadder, perhaps.’

  ‘I’d be sad out here.’

  Brean snorted and tried the radio, fiddling with it for as long as he dared, but he couldn’t raise anyone at the other end. This machine is meant to be simple to use.

  ‘Is it broken?’ asked Mael.

  ‘No. We’re just too far out,’ sighed Brean. ‘Too many mountains in the way to the south. They warned me it might be the case.’

  ‘Maybe we could raise one of the Guild of Radiomen’s holds in Rodal,’ said the driver, sarcastically.

  ‘A fine idea,’ said Brean. He turned the radio set off and slipped it back in its compartment and concealed it once more. ‘Would you not mind passing on this little message for us. Who to? Why the very same king that’s been hanging Rodalian leaders for their impertinence.’ He laughed. ‘This box of tricks will work better when we’re rolling close to the border back home. A bit of patience and we’ll be fine, rich gentlemen by journey’s end.’

  ‘Let’s leave now. Sod the Nijumeti. We can grab the lady and take her with us.’

  ‘You must be joking. You’re getting greedy, Mael Luagh. It’s not a single clan we’re selling to out here, it’s the horde. That means the whole damn lot of them. Mean, saddle-born rascals, with a fine talent for mayhem. And Kani Yargul doesn’t have to catch us to make things difficult. He just has to let the Marsh Lords know how grateful he is to the Luagh boys for all our ball bearings, rubber straps and barrels of engine oil. When the first nomad comes a-flying over Hellin, we’d have a bigger price on our heads than the emperor’s granddaughter.’

  ‘So we’re to be informers?’

  ‘A dirty word. I prefer to think of it as facilitating a joyous family reunion. If there’s anything more disagreeable than a clan horseman, it’s a disappointed clan horseman. Business as usual for us in the camp. Then we clear off. Nothing out of the ordinary to tip off our trading partners. I don’t know how friendly those imperial fellows with the big steel aircraft are going to be when they come calling for Lady Cassandra. She looks to be a tent-guest rather than a saddle-wife, but who knows how hard these far-called boys will land? Them with their big guns and habit of chiding anyone in the vicinity with a noose. It wouldn’t do for any unpleasantness to be blamed on a few innocent lads out of Hellin.’

  Better this way. Put any bloodshed behind us, and the mound of imperial gold before us. Yes, this could be a very profitable trip by the end of it. And filthy rich in a while, is still filthy rich.

  THREE

  DEMON OF THE NORTH WIND

  The high, echoing debating chamber of the Rodalian Speakers had been witness to many arguments over the centuries, but none as important as this one. At least to Jacob. Council wasn’t in session. This was a private meeting between the Weyland exiles’ leaders and the Rodalian forces competing over their future. Jacob could tell that Temba Lesh hailed from the same family as Sheplar. An ungainly man of sixty-five years with rubbery features and a short white brush of hair who seemed to lean unnaturally forward like a bird, even while seated at the stone table in the centre of the chamber. A carrion bird, as far as Jacob was concerned. At least, that’s what we’ll be if he has his way. Thrown back to Bad Marcus to fight for our lives for the Vandians’ amusement. Nima Tash was a different matter entirely. Like a jasmine-scented porcelain doll of how outsiders depicted female Rodalian beauty. But the young daughter of the murdered Rodalian leader was far from fragile. She was as tough as tempered steel and it would be a fool who bet against her claiming her father’s absent seat. Out of the two of them, I reckon I’m glad she’s the one backing us.

  ‘Your supporters used to argue heatedly for remaining removed from Weyland’s recent difficulties,’ said Temba Lesh, his head bobbing in Nima Tash’s direction.

  ‘That was before my father was hanged for daring to speak against the Vandian presence inside the league,’ said Nima. ‘Hanged in front of our embassy party, despite carrying an ambassador’s papers and supposedly being under the royal palace of Weyland’s protection of salt and roof.’

  ‘The Imperium does what it likes,’ said Jacob. ‘They don’t bother with diplomatic niceties. You don’t bow fast and deep enough to them; they’ll call it a discourtesy and take your head off.’

  Temba thumped the table. ‘And yet these are the ver
y people you have goaded inside the territory of the Lanca.’

  ‘You want to complain about it,’ said Jacob, ‘I’d suggest taking the matter up with King Marcus. He’s the Imperium’s man in Weyland, not us.’

  ‘This is precisely why we should not get involved any deeper,’ said Temba Lesh. ‘It was a mistake to try to mediate in Weyland’s civil war. Blood must out and it was never ours to risk or spill. A mistake that cost the previous Speaker of the Wind his life.’ He pointed accusingly at Nima Tash. ‘You have allowed your grief as a daughter to overwhelm your duties as a Rodalian speaker. Just allowing these foreigners exile among us is a grievous provocation.’

  ‘Spoken like a candidate to be the next Speaker of the Winds,’ said Nima.

  ‘I reckon Miss Tash knows how to count,’ said Jacob. ‘And she’s got eyes to see. You think that Marcus will be happy only holding Weyland after he’s pacified it? A madman like Bad Marcus is either adding to the pile of loot to divide among his supporters, or he’s growing nervous that someone’s going to steal his share. The usurper’s not the sharing kind. And with the skyguard and new weapons provided by the empire, Marcus doesn’t need the Walls of the League anymore. Rodal is just another bird clucking for the plucking.’

  ‘I do not wish to be involved,’ said Nima, ‘but as General Carnehan says, we are. And it is better that Rodal joins the fight while we still have allies in Weyland to assist us.’

  ‘Allies? This man Carnehan is a danger to us all. His presence among us is an insult. He fled crimes in Weyland, and then served across the ocean as a Burn mercenary. He is a wanted fugitive across the border under his true name.’

  ‘I know how to fight,’ said Jacob. ‘And I know how to win. If there’s any other qualification to being a commander, it doesn’t belong on a battlefield.’

  ‘We are not yet a battlefield,’ spat Temba. ‘Rodal is a sovereign nation. We make our own decisions in our own parliament.’

  ‘We had a parliament too,’ said Prince Owen, entering the council chamber. He was accompanied by Anna Kurtain. The dark-skinned woman glanced coldly at Jacob. She still hadn’t forgiven him for shooting the prince in the leg in Midsburg. Or maybe she was still pissed Jacob had used her as a hostage to guarantee the prince’s signature on his commission as commander of the northern forces? The assembly needs its standard to rally around. Damned if I was going to let the boy stay behind for some suicidal last stand. Prince Owen limped forward on a cane before speaking again. ‘The national assembly was dissolved in Arcadia by royal decree.’