The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘This is not a path that many foreigners find comfortable walking,’ said Temba Lesh. ‘It is treacherously icy. If you misjudge the winds’ timing, they will catch you and throw you into the air like a hound playing with a bone.’

  ‘I spent a good few years in a monastery at Geru Peak,’ said Jacob. ‘I’m almost part mountain goat now.’

  ‘I have heard of the place,’ said Temba. ‘Your monks do not find many converts here. Our spirits of the wind blow louder than any call from the strange saints buried inside your religious texts.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, but they never really looked too hard. Geru Peak was a place you went to be with your own thoughts, mostly. Just the mountains and the sky and the sea.’

  ‘Strange things wash up on the tides below their cliffs.’

  ‘Don’t they just,’ said Jacob. Like a half-dead war leader escaping his former trade. ‘Although a lot of what you hear down that way is just stories.’

  ‘Where we stand now holds a tale,’ said Temba. ‘Would you like to hear it, before you try to convince me again to sacrifice my countrymen in your hopeless foreign war?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This place is called the Pagoda of Chesa and Senge. It features in one of the ancient legends. They were two lovers, whose families disapproved of their relationship. Senge, the boy in the tale, was set a series of impossible feats to achieve, to win the hand of Chesa. Neither family wanted a union, and they thought the unachievable nature of the tasks would ensure his failure. Senge defeated countless enemies – the Great Krul Michka, Spear of the Steppes, wicked wind spirits, many ghosts, as well as hordes of strange creatures from the high mountains. He did this with Chesa’s secret help, however. When Chesa’s assistance was discovered, she was sentenced to death by her own mother. So Senge defied both families by rescuing Chesa from her home in Hadra-Hareer. The two lovers fled here to this pagoda, pursued by soldiers from both families. They prayed to the winds to save them, but the winds could only summon enough force to rescue one lover. Senge prayed for Chesa to be saved. Chesa prayed for Senge to be saved. The winds blew them both high into the air, and rather than allow one to live heartbroken without the other, both were impaled on the same peak and their souls joined with the wind so they could live together in eternity. That is where the Che’senge Wind comes from. If you listen quietly, that wind sounds like the boy and girl whispering to each other.’

  ‘And I feel a lesson blowing in behind that old tale . . .’

  ‘You may beat the odds and even achieve the impossible, but trying to live solely for another leads to misfortune. In the end, the mountain breaks everything.’

  ‘Family before self, nation before family and pride before a fall. The mountain breaks everything,’ said Jacob. ‘You said the same in your council chamber. I must have heard those words a thousand times when I was in the monastery in Rodal. It’s a good saying, mostly because it’s true. Every Rodalian city a fortified citadel hanging off the crags, most of your streets buried deep below the rocks. Some on heights so high attackers need air masks to assault them. Gales driving strong enough they make hurricanes a breeze by comparison. Thousands of miles of winding canyons and hidden valleys and towering bluffs with countless ambush points. Rodal, always the indestructible Walls of the League.’

  ‘And we will not abandon those walls to venture out and die in a fight that’s not ours,’ said the old politician.

  ‘You won’t have to,’ said Jacob. ‘I know that Rodal’s not a country. I always knew that. It’s a killing ground.’

  ‘King Marcus will not venture here. Neither will his imperial allies.’

  ‘They just need the right encouragement,’ said Jacob.

  ‘You are a most dangerous man. A killer.’

  ‘I tried to be a better man,’ said Jacob. ‘I left. I changed. I hid.’

  ‘There are many things a man may hide from,’ said Temba. ‘His true nature is sadly not one of them.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Jacob. But I tried so damn hard, didn’t I?

  ‘I understand your wife died in the slavers’ original raid on Northhaven?’

  ‘Mary Carnehan was her name,’ said Jacob. ‘Lord, how I loved that woman.’

  ‘You must have, to have attempted to change for her.’

  ‘I had already changed when I washed up back in Weyland,’ said Jacob. ‘I’d had my fill of fighting for rulers who made Bad Marcus look like a charity warden. I just wanted peace. To be left alone. The peace of church vows and a quiet life. I guess I stayed changed for Mary and our family, though. When Mary died, it didn’t take long for me to dig up my pistols and my old habits.’

  ‘You still have a son to live for.’

  ‘Interned inside a cell in the city.’

  ‘When you leave Rodal, Carter Carnehan will leave alongside you, that I promise. Pellas is a world without end. There’s always somewhere else you can travel to.’

  ‘You can never run away,’ said Jacob. ‘It took losing my wife and old life to teach me that.’

  ‘But you can,’ insisted Temba. ‘Your only anchor is the weight of revenge. Cut it free.’

  ‘If the skels’ slave raid had just been a random attack,’ said Jacob. ‘I might have been able to walk away from Mary’s slaying. But discovering Bad Marcus sold my last surviving child like he was no better than poultry at market . . . finding out Marcus was responsible for burning my town and murdering Mary for Vandian gold? My own king. The same government that was meant to protect us. How could I possibly walk away from a sin as black as that?’

  ‘Sins are for the gods to punish, not men. You chose to live by a vow of peace once before. You may do so again. The way out is yours.’

  ‘Saints and God,’ said Jacob. ‘They made me into a hammer. They gave me the times that forged me. Now, all I’m being sent are nails. I’m meant to be here.’

  ‘Not in Rodal,’ said Temba Lesh, leaning out over the ledge and feeling the cold air against his face. ‘No. Not here.’

  Jacob shrugged. ‘Your heart is in the right place, Temba Lesh. Just like Prince Owen. Working for peace when the times only want to give you war. Thinking there is a deal to be done. That the usurper can be eased out of his stolen throne by reason and right alone.’

  ‘Follow your leader’s example,’ said Temba. ‘That is my suggestion. Seek the way of peace.’

  ‘I tried it the prince’s way,’ said Jacob. ‘I got a civil war instead of a quick coup and a bullet in the back of Bad Marcus’ ugly head. I followed Prince Owen a second time and left a quarter of the National Assembly’s army dead in the smoking ruins of Midsburg.’

  ‘You are sworn to him,’ said Temba, sounding horrified. ‘Your words sound close to treason.’

  ‘I made a vow over my wife’s grave,’ said Jacob. ‘I didn’t give it to any whelp of a boy.’

  Temba pointed down the path. ‘Go from Hadra-Hareer. Leave!’

  ‘As you like it. But you had better understand that Prince Owen is merely the standard the rebels follow,’ said Jacob. ‘I’m the lance the standard’s attached to. And a lance is only meant for a single task.’

  ‘Skor Khrom,’ spat Temba.

  I’ve heard that before. ‘Not any Rodalian insult I know.’

  ‘It is not a curse. Skor Khrom is the Demon of the North Wind,’ said Temba. ‘One that takes human form and moves among the people, sowing hatred.’

  ‘Hatred I’ve got aplenty, but I’m saving it all for Bad Marcus and the Vandians.’

  Temba shook his head and turned his back on Jacob. ‘You are an oath-breaker, with contempt in your heart for your own master. Duty and service and honour. This is everything.’

  ‘No. That would be victory,’ said Jacob. He seized Temba’s legs and pulled them up, tumbling the old politician forward, screaming, across the edge of the pagoda. Jacob leant over the stone parapet and watched the body bouncing off the ragged cliffs, tumbling through the air to be swallowed by the white river of clou
ds running below the peaks. The mountain breaks everything. It would smash Bad Marcus and the Imperium too before long. Jacob heard a voice whispering on the wind, but it wasn’t the Rodalian’s pair of tragic lovers. It was Mary, his wife’s weary, disappointed voice. You didn’t have to do that.

  ‘I’ve missed hearing you. You’ve been gone so long. He was just one man. Old and stubborn. Nima Tash will win her election now. Prince Owen will have all of Rodal on his side.’

  You’re a fool if you think he’ll be the last corpse.

  ‘The enemy were coming here anyway. Temba Lesh was a dead man walking. The trick is to make Bad Marcus and his friends arrive on my timetable, not the enemies’. One fool dead to save a nation, maybe two countries. I’ve made far worse bargains in my time. I can beat our enemies, Mary. It’s the only thing I know how to do.’

  You knew more, once.

  ‘I did. You saw it, too. But you’re gone. You’re dead.’

  My love, so are you.

  ‘That’s as maybe. Hell if I’m going the rest of the way without company. Bad company.’

  Don’t get Carter killed. Please. Take our son and leave here. Travel far away and save him.

  ‘Sariel has plans for Carter. He’ll be free enough and far from here. The boy won’t need to see the worst of what I’ll have to do.’

  I will, though.

  ‘Jacob Carnehan will be resting alongside you soon enough, Mary. I promise. But first, Quicksilver is going to fix what’s broken.’

  Not everything.

  ‘No. Not everything.’ A lance, impaling Bad Marcus. Driving into the glory and pride of the Imperium again and again and again. His enemies’ dead corpses littered across the valleys and canyons of this hard, cold land. The Walls of the League. Every invader the Lanca had ever faced in the north had met their end here. Quicksilver had just one more foe to add to the tally. ‘I can’t have peace, Mary. So I’ll have to settle for war. Bad Marcus wanted it; he practically begged for it. He spat in my face and he as good as spat on your grave. So I’ve arranged a fine old war for him. It won’t be like the Burn, but I reckon it’ll do.’

  Jacob walked back down the treacherously icy path. Whispers chased his every step. Mary and Temba Lesh and maybe the long-dead voices of Chesa and Senge. It sounded like ‘No more, no more.’ Jacob shook his head. Sigh all you like. There’ll be new ghosts here soon enough. Enough company for everyone.

  Paetro walked down the street of Northhaven’s old town alongside Duncan. Now that the southern army had claimed its victory here, the Vandians had landed their giant capital ships around the airfield outside the town and on the banks of the White Wolf River. The flats were filled with the hammering of the Imperium’s new barracks being raised. The chop of helo rotors as the empire’s attack craft drifted up and over the town’s homes to patrol the pacified territory. Following the arrival of the Army of the Boles in the previously sleepy backwater, the township’s malnourished, depleted population had been further stunned by the Vandians’ overwhelming show of force. Enough metal in a single patrol ship to make any citizen a wealthy man. Helo squadrons and rocket-driven craft and capital ships capable of swallowing a sea-borne frigate without indigestion. Tanks rolling down ramps, each as large as a mobile fortress and resembling them besides. The tramp of thousands of legionaries’ boots marching in unison. Technologies that made the Weylanders look as advanced as the nomads of the steppes; numbers that made the locals feel like strangers in their own homeland.

  ‘Workers are a lot like house cats,’ said Paetro. ‘They get nervous and jittery when a new master or mistress is forced on them. Soon as they know they’re going to be watered and fed as regularly as the previous master, they’ll settle down.’

  ‘The man Prefect Colbert appointed as new sheriff is an army officer called Donald Blood. His nickname in his regiment was “Flogging Blood”.’

  ‘So the locals are getting the boot rather than the food bowl,’ said Paetro.

  ‘There are supplies enough for anyone who turns in rebel fighters and sympathizers,’ said Duncan.

  ‘Divide and conquer? Nothing like it for showing your contempt and seeding self-loathing among the defeated. There’re only two good ways to deal with your enemies, lad. You make them dead or you make them your friend. Putting your shoe leather on a man’s throat and kicking him every now and then to help you feel better is a sign of weakness, not strength. Sooner or later, the most docile, conquered serf is going to get tired of the beatings, snap and come at you. When a worker’s crazy like that, they don’t care if they live or die.’ ‘I think the royalists are still enjoying the feeling of victory.’ ‘Well, that’s a feeling for children who enjoy taking a magnifying glass to ants,’ said Paetro. ‘They had better start acting like war leaders, or they’ll lose everything they’ve won.’

  ‘It’ll be my father and his friends’ problem. Not mine.’ ‘Right enough. This town is the final stepping stone for us,’ said Paetro. ‘Prince Gyal has everything he came for now. He’s got a victory fit for a fine triumph in Vandis: the slave revolt avenged; holds filled with so many prisoners that he is going to risk flooding the slave markets back in the Imperium.’

  ‘So we just need Cassandra back safe,’ said Duncan.

  ‘That we being you, me and Helrena,’ said Paetro. ‘Prince Gyal only needs the little highness as a wedding gift for Helrena.’

  But of course, mused Duncan, his true wedding gift will be the imperial throne. Like the wanted posters in the constables’ office used to read, ‘Dead or Alive’. And if Cassandra turned up dead, that would be just too bad as far as the scheming Prince Gyal was concerned; and no doubt a lot cleaner for his future offspring and the imperial line of succession.

  Paetro patted the short-sword hanging from his black leather belt.

  ‘We’ll make time this afternoon for a training spar.’

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re training me to duel as hard as you used to train Lady Cassandra.’ The muscles in Duncan’s arms ached at the gruelling memory of their last session together.

  ‘I’m training you for war, lad, not duels. This one or the next. Most of our house’s guardsmen served in the legions, same as I did. Decades of service. Your training is as good a substitute as you’re likely to receive.’

  ‘Northhaven had a territorial army company where I learnt the basics.’ Along with Carter and all the prefecture’s other young bucks.

  Duncan hadn’t thought about his old friend for an age. Friends, then enemies, and perhaps friends again. I wonder where he is now? Maybe in one of the rebel gangs plaguing the north. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Carter had been with the ambush of the royal army as it marched on Northhaven. You saved my life in the sky mines, Carter. It’d be a shame if I had to kill you now. Stay lost. Stay an escaped slave until the Imperium’s blood lust is sated and it leaves the Lanca, and then crawl out of the forests and the wilds to live under an assumed name. I owe you that much, at least. And Carter’s father dead of course. For kidnapping Cassandra and gunning me down. But Duncan would leave that particular piece of revenge to Paetro, if he could. Paetro Barca needed it. For his dead daughter and his honour. His sanity. Only a blood-price would do. Paetro rolled his eyes. ‘Firing single-shot rifles, was it? Black powder with pebbles for ammunition? I said, war, not chasing after partridges in the woods.’

  ‘You said I was showing promise at last after our last bout?’ ‘You’re fast enough on your toes, Duncan of Weyland. The kind of speed and endurance that only comes with youth. But you lack the instincts built by decades of soldiering. To obey orders without question. To shoot first rather than hesitate, wondering if the foe you must kill is deserving of death. That’s why our house hires from the legions where it can. Old soldiers with tested instincts.’ Killer instincts. Duncan had won his freedom as a slave by saving lives. Helrena’s and Lady Cassandra’s. Could he prosper by taking them so easily? Did Duncan need a foe to prove himself an enemy by shooting first before he felt justified in kil
ling them? If I had simply shot Jacob Carnehan on sight at our last encounter, would we be here today?

  Cassandra wouldn’t have been taken as a prisoner during the slave revolt. Helrena might have stayed in Vandia and never fought to join the punishment fleet. And maybe she wouldn’t be planning to marry Prince Gyal. Well, the world was full of might-have-beens.

  The Cold Court. This high, chill place had been where the ancient Rodalian monarchs received petitioners and conducted the business of their realm. The flat top of one of the high mountains that rose above the canyon bluffs where Hadra-Hareer had been carved and burrowed out of the stone. A single, simple granite throne carved too, along with stone benches for the courtiers and citizens of the mountain country. Jacob shivered in the freezing, driving wind, knowing that it could grow far worse. The Valley of the Hell-winds. Well-named. Even with a thick coat, Jacob felt the chill more than any of the Rodalians waiting here, courtiers, soldiers, priests and the newly elected Speaker of the Winds. Nima Tash’s perfect, porcelain skin seemed to glow in the light up here while his face felt as though it should be turning blue. Sariel waited with Jacob. The strange old sorcerer appeared as untroubled by the wind chill as Nima. Jacob had heard all about the history of this place from the locals who worked at the monastery. Millennia before, Rodal had been governed by kings and queens, little different from Weyland’s rulers. Here the mountain monarchs had sat in session until a king called Hackchen led two hundred warriors to defend the narrow Chalhand pass into Rodal from the greatest clan horde ever to be assembled. Hackchen was unmarried and without heirs, so before he left Hadra-Hareer, he extracted an oath from his council that his advisers would rule with the consent of the people, and that the great families and houses of Rodal would never again squabble over the vacant throne. Hackchen had died a hero’s death, buried below mounds of his nomad foes, and the council had honoured his wishes and kept to their oath. They still sang songs of Hackchen’s exploits and bravery in the high villages and towns. Hackchen the Last. Hackchen the Greatest. That the Speaker of the Winds had chosen to meet the Vandian invaders here rather than inside the city’s warmth carried a deep symbolism that would be totally lost on the Imperium’s lackeys.