by Stephen Hunt
‘He’s a strange one, that Sariel,’ agreed Anna. ‘But he’s got powers. Without the old wanderer and Carter’s father, we would never have escaped Vandia alive.’
‘And where else would we be, I wonder?’
‘I’ve got as much reason to distrust Father Carnehan as any, the way he’s used me. But as my father used to say about our local assemblyman, he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch. We’re going to need a few like Jacob Carnehan in Hadra-Hareer in the days to come.’
‘You think we’ll survive here, Anna?’
‘This city is a hell of a place to attack,’ shrugged the prince’s bodyguard. ‘The Vandians’ first assault broke apart like a glass bottle hurled off the mountain peaks. But you know as well as I do how the Imperium thinks.’
‘They won’t give up, will they?’
‘Main reason they’re here is to punish us for humiliating them in the slave revolt. Once the local town bully loses his reputation, it’s one short step from victimizer to victimized.’
‘Vandia’s not exactly local, though,’ said Willow.
‘That’s one thing working in our favour. This war’s got to have the longest supply line in history.’
‘You sound like Father Carnehan.’
Anna’s eyes narrowed. ‘I sound like General Carnehan. He knows war, I’ll give him that. A lot more than he knows about holy texts and gods and saints.’
Maybe God’s kept him alive. Or maybe it’s the Devil’s stealers who’ve preserved the man? Willow shook her head and trembled. It still seemed a madness, the difference between the man she had known from childhood and the man she now watched stalking through Hadra-Hareer’s passages. The man of peace who shunned all violence. Who had given gentle sermons and chiding admonishments whenever his congregation erred from mercy and peace. The Jacob Carnehan Willow knew had been broken and something terrible had slipped out of the shell that had been left. Perhaps the monster had always been inside. The saints know, since the civil war had started, she had seen monsters crawl out of too many. Is there one inside me, too? ‘I wanted us to run,’ said Willow. ‘I asked Carter to leave with me.’
‘How far can you flee?’ asked Anna. ‘Further than the range of a Vandian warship? Further than their slavers’ planes? There’s always evil in the world. If not the Imperium’s, then someone else’s. For too much of my life, I was kept caged by evil. I don’t reckon I’ve got much running left in me. You can’t run to freedom. You just have to plant your feet and take it.’
‘By force,’ sighed Willow.
‘You could try reason, good intentions and fine words,’ said Anna. ‘But when the brutes coming at you have got a whip in one hand and a pistol in the other, you won’t be debating for long.’
‘I wish there was another way.’
‘You find it, Willow, be sure to let me know. What—?’ Too late, Anna Kurtain heard the movement behind her and snatched at her pistol holster, but the large Rodalian who seemed to appear from nowhere seized her from behind, covering her face with a rag stinking of chloroform.
How’s this thief broken in? Willow took a step back, nearly tumbling over a chair. Anna possessed a lithe strength . . . the fitness of youth honed by years of hard labour inside the sky mines; but taken by surprise it was of little use. The prince’s bodyguard struggled in her attacker’s massive muscled arms, her boots kicking against the air until she trembled to stillness and was unceremoniously dropped over a rug. The assault had only taken seconds. Thief ? Robber? One of the factions that want Rodal to stay out of Weyland’s war? I don’t have any weapons inside the room. Willow threw the chair in front of her and backed away, her eyes casting desperately around for any heavy object she could grasp and wield as a mace. As she looked she realized too late that another attacker had circled behind her. No! The second assailant seized her arms and pressed a blade against her soft throat. She groaned as she recognized a too-familiar stench. Aged beer and sweat and malice. Willow moaned again as a spiteful voice sounded hot against her ear, confirming her assailant’s identity. Nocks. Her step-mother’s brutal terrier. What’s he doing inside Rodal? He should be across the border serving with my father’s regiment.
The large Rodalian who had broken into her apartment advanced on her. Willow lashed a foot at him, but he stopped short before her boot could connect. Nocks tightened his grip.
‘Don’t you mind the big lad, Willowy Willow,’ rasped Nocks. ‘Norbu’s something of an expert on raiding cities and carrying away saddle-wives.’
Willow had scarce seen a Rodalian as large or wide as this man. And why is Nocks talking about saddle-wives? That’s a steppes tradition, nothing to do with the mountains?
‘You did not tell me that the woman you sought was with child,’ said the brute named as Norbu. ‘It is always bad luck to claim a saddlewife carrying another’s son.’
‘Oh, this one is nothing but bad luck any way you cut it,’ laughed Nocks.
‘I’ll scream and you won’t dare use that knife,’ hissed Willow, hoping the evil manservant could still be controlled by fear of her father.
The squat brute snorted in amusement. ‘Ain’t that the beauty of having your room buried under so many tonnes of stone. You work your lungs all you like, Willow Landor. It’s just you, me and the big lad down here.’
‘Leave her and let’s carry away the other girl,’ urged Norbu. ‘Take the dark-skinned one instead. She is a beauty worthy of any man’s tent – she fought fast and well, too. This Willow’s belly will slow your escape down.’
‘I’m stealing to order,’ said Nocks, clenching Willow roughly as she tried to struggle free. ‘Much like yourself, son. This little firebrand is the wife of a nobleman down south . . . and he’s the one who baked the bun in her oven. The man wants her back with the bun too, and more importantly, so does the woman I serve.’
‘My step-mother can go to hell,’ Willow spat.
Norbu did not seem happy with Willow’s state, but he lifted his rag still wet with the sickly-sweet stench of chloroform. ‘Then I shall use the sleeping cloth and let us be done with this.’
‘All in good time,’ snickered Nocks. ‘I scratched your back out on the slopes and this is where you scratch mine . . . a man should beat down on his steak a little before he consumes it. You made the mistress look like a fool, Willowy Willow. Betraying the marriage she kindly arranged for you and running off with the pretender and his rebel army. So I’m taking you back to Lady Leyla and the viscount. He wants his child out of your belly before the mistress gives you a proper chastisement as payment for your double-dealing. Made her promise to give me first crack of that whip.’
‘My sham of a marriage has already been annulled by Prince Owen.’
‘You want to talk shams, how about setting a boy-pretender against a man-king? Takes an army to make a man king, and the horse you so unwisely backed don’t have one anymore. Just a handful of bandits and bushwhackers running around the north, slowly being hunted down. That and a few deserters holed up in the rocks around Rodal. Prince Owen says he’s divorced you? After I roll you across the border inside a smuggler’s barrel, you’ll find out whose law holds sway. In this card game, I’m betting a king against a prince.’
‘Jacob Carnehan will kill you for this!’ And if he doesn’t, I will.
‘I surely do hope he comes after us to try. The big general in the city. But no. I reckon the ol’ badger’s picked his tunnel to die in, and the Vandians will fly here soon enough to finish the job they started. You and me will be long gone before the city’s sacked, though. You always did like your reading back in Hawkland Park. You can read about the fall of Hadra-Hareer in the newspapers when you’re returned to your husband’s loving household.’
Willow tried to shove herself back, surprise the brute into loosening his grip, but the ugly goblin stood as hard as stone. ‘To hell with Wallingbeck, too.’
‘You’ve been a grave disappointment to all of us, girl,’ chuckled Nocks. ‘Time
you began setting matters right.’
The giant Rodalian advanced on Willow and pushed the warm wet cloth down hard across her nose, pinching her nostrils. She tried to choke and cough her way past the cloying fumes, find fresh air as her eyes watered and stung, but she met only darkness.
It seemed like Carter had been crossing the steppes for months, although the reality of the matter was that he could count his journey in weeks. Of course, if it had just been his journey alone, he might have borne it better. But not only was Carter travelling with Sariel – fallen back through habit into wild boasts and implausible stories – but he’d also been saddled with the argumentative presence of their pilot, Beula Fetterman. She should have flown her two passengers into the steppes and held back enough fuel in the plane’s tank to return to Rodal’s border fortresses. Instead, she had continued to point the aircraft into the grasslands until its engines were sucking on fumes and vapours, until they had landed and been forced to abandon the plane on the endless prairie; far outside the range of recovery by anyone other than a train of wagons filled with aviation fuel. Fetterman blamed a faulty fuel gauge for the error, but wasn’t that the point of a supposedly trained pilot . . . someone to double-check the work of the ground crew before passengers entrusted their lives to her aerial craft? Now, not only did Carter have to put up with Fetterman’s complaints and caustic remarks, but she’d failed to report their safe landing to the authorities in Rodal. Carter could only imagine what Willow was thinking now in Hadra-Hareer, failing to receive the report of their safe arrival. She’ll be worried sick. And she’s got enough to worry about with the war on her doorstep and a baby on the way. Carter felt guilty about leaving the woman he loved, even though putting her in the way of the hostile nomads would have been insanity. Her absence made him feel guilty about being here, trekking after Sariel, instead of trapped in Hadra-Hareer, hemmed in by Rodalian mountain ranges. A near-powerless witness to the final stages of the war they had lost across the border. Here, the ground was soft. The grass was thick and green. The sky and the clouds ran on forever, wider than any human could hold on to. Out here, one boot in front of the other, he was getting closer to something. Or at least, he felt he was. But maybe what I’m doing is running away. From Willow and another man’s child. From the fight in Weyland and what my father’s turning into. Damn it, even when I joined the rebel army it’s felt like I was running away half the time. I escaped the sky mines and I’ve been fleeing ever since.
Fetterman marched ahead of them as if she knew the way. Like Carter and Sariel, she was weighed down with a heavy backpack. Food and supplies. Warm blankets against the incongruously cold nights. Every now and then she glanced surreptitiously behind her to place Carter and Sariel in her wake. If any one of us here understands where we are going, it’s Sariel.
‘Tell the aviator to set her compass nor’east,’ said Sariel.
Carter couldn’t blame the old trickster for not wanting to converse with Fetterman. Try being locked up in a cell with her for weeks in HadraHareer. She glanced crossly back at him. Carter whistled and made a gesture towards the given compass point.
‘How long will we be marching like this?’ she called out.
Carter raised his voice. ‘Quicker for you if you’d headed back to the mountains.’
‘And wouldn’t you like to see me murdered!’ shouted Fetterman. ‘A lone target for the Nijumeti raiders.’
‘I’d feel right sorry for the first nomad that came across her,’ muttered Carter. ‘Especially if they tried to seize her for a saddle-wife.’
‘She reminds me of my seventh wife,’ said Sariel. ‘Who flaunted her beauty but hid her scolding tongue until we had circled the maypole together in front of a priest. What was her name, again? Ah, yes. Shalne Ardeni.’
‘How did matters end between you and her?’
‘I tricked Shalne into divorcing me for a marriage to the Sultan of Utorcore,’ said Sariel. ‘The sultan was a merciless tyrant, and the unexpected disturbance served by his new bride saved many hundreds of thousands of innocents from war and prosecution by his army. Their union is why I shall never journey to Utorcore again.’
‘I sure wish we could come across one of those circles of standing stones and shortcut this journey,’ said Carter.
‘Such risks must be saved for voyages far longer than this one,’ noted Sariel. Worryingly, it sounded like the crafty old fox had something in mind beyond merely crossing the steppes.
‘The stealers would track us down?’
‘Soon enough their allies would,’ said Sariel. ‘We are well within range of the Vandians operating out of Weyland.’
Carter grunted. ‘I remember.’ On their first night camping in the steppes, shivering in the cold with no fire to act as a signal to the nomads, they had seen a Vandian patrol ship scorching through the night, passing high and distant. What it was doing this far north, Carter couldn’t say. No damn good, that much is certain. ‘You think they were scouting for slaves for their skels to raid?’
‘It is possible.’
‘I never came across any Nijumeti inside the sky mines,’ said Carter. ‘I got the impression the Vandians wanted their slaves with a certain level of book-learning.’
‘For the sky mines, perhaps,’ said Sariel. ‘Having barbarians accidentally blowing up the emperor’s precious mines because they think a fuse is black magic is hardly profitable. But there are slaves from many nations and races throughout the empire. Vandians prefer not to break their backs by tilling the soil, labouring in mills or busying themselves with the drudgery of keeping a home.’
‘So what do the locals do instead?’
‘Feel superior to the slaves. You might say that is one of the slave force’s main draws as far as the Imperium’s celestial caste is concerned.’
Carter was puzzled. ‘But don’t the castes at the bottom of the heap get bored with idleness?’
‘Some work. But it is difficult to find a job when the next worker wears chains and is made to toil for free. Many jobs that are available pay so little that they would make almost no difference to you or your family’s life. The pointlessness of not taking labour may rot away your soul, but accepting it often makes you feel like a dupe when you see your friends and neighbours living just the same as you without its burdens. For the idle masses, there are the constant distractions of the arena and games and feasts. There are also players and a variety of diversions on the public kino screens. Lotteries. Competitions. Gambling – both legal and illegal. Sin and crime are regulated close to legality inside Vandia. Luckily for the rulers there is always a healthy pool of slave fighters to die in the arenas, too.’
‘How can the lower castes afford to survive if unemployment is their lot?’
‘Think of the Imperium as a pyramid,’ said Sariel. ‘At the very top is the celestial caste controlling the great houses, enjoying the wealth and power of gods made mortal. Scheming against each other occupies most of their time. Then there are the educated middle castes: scientists, soldiers, manufactory masters, engineers, secret police, surgeons and the like. Advancing through the many graduations of caste or just avoiding slipping into the lower castes for themselves and their children is enough to keep them busy. Then there is the great teeming mass of the lower castes, penned up in the rabble towers; fed and watered by the Gratis Imperium, the benevolent grace of the Emperor Jaelis. Vandia’s citizenry are made slaves through living dependent on their masters’ whims. Be caught speaking out against the wrong person or in favour of the wrong cause and watch your family starve on punishment rations. Below the lower castes, there are many millions of captured slaves or tribute workers sent by the Imperium’s subjected neighbours, as well as mercenaries attracted by the legions’ pay. In reality, the difference between a slave and a lowercaste citizen is an accident of birth. Everyone perfectly balanced on top of everyone else. The hostility and envy of the rest of the world against the Imperium acts as glue. There is always the bone of hope, false hope, but
hope nevertheless, to dangle in front of the masses. Even a slave may be freed and made a citizen should they please their master or mistress sufficiently.’
Carter shook his head. ‘It sounds . . . insane.’
‘Speaking honestly, it is certainly an unnatural state of affairs,’ shrugged Sariel. ‘A state only preserved by the immense wealth of ores bled from their stratovolcano. The riches of the world, traded for the world’s science, power and industry; remade as the steel bones of the whole terrible structure. But the Imperium is a pyramid, and a pyramid is the most stable of constructions. All the weight of it pushing down and squeezing into itself.’
‘Into people.’
‘People made Vandia,’ said Sariel, sadly. ‘You can’t hang what they chose to make on me or mine. You can’t even blame the stealers. They didn’t build Vandia. The stealers found a rotten fruit and burrowed into it. That’s what maggots are for.’
‘And what are you for, Sariel, truly?’