The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘If it keeps you happy, I’ll tell everyone I meet how the Prince of Thieves courageously raided Rodal not once but twice to abduct me.’

  ‘And you must not stint on the part of the tale where I set fire to the rice-eaters’ town the second time.’

  ‘Perish the thought.’ Cassandra was about to tell Alexamir how happy his return would make his aunt when an unusually large party of Nijumeti came bearing down towards them through the centre of the camp. Two lines of warriors marched with what looked like captives in their centre, followed on both sides and behind by a small crowd of jeering and hooting nomads. Cassandra moved aside with Alexamir to let the party pass. As they did, she realized with a jolt that the faces of the two prisoners trudging forward in the centre were familiar ones.

  ‘I know them!’ exclaimed Cassandra. It was Carter Carnehan and Sariel Skel-bane, two of her abductors from the imperium.

  ‘As do I,’ said Alexamir, sounding almost as shocked as her by his realization. ‘I saw that pair leaving the rice-eaters’ capital when I arrived. I thought them traders of the air.’

  ‘They are not,’ said Cassandra. ‘They’re Weylanders – two of the escaped slaves who held me hostage on the other side of the mountains. The younger one is Carter Carnehan, son of the preacher who first captured me. The white-bearded devil is Sariel Skel-bane, an outlaw with a long list of crimes against the Imperium. By all accounts, Vandia’s secret police, the hoodsmen, have been pursuing him since before I was born.’

  ‘A famous thief, then? A pity such deeds will not help them here,’ said Alexamir.

  Cassandra and Alexamir pushed their way through the jostling crowd of nomads, slowing by one of the warriors marching behind the pair of Weylanders.

  ‘How did you come across these foreigners?’ asked Alexamir.

  ‘One of our wooden pigeons training new pilots passed over them. They marched across the steppes as boldly if they were Nijumet-born. Our fliers raised a hunting party on their return,’ said the fighter. ‘Be wary of the old one. He is a weirdling. He pulls knives out of his heart as you might remove thorns from your skin, and then heals himself with a hot blade.’

  ‘Then it will be the Test of Fire,’ said Alexamir.

  The soldier nodded with a sharp flash of teeth.

  ‘What test is that?’ asked Cassandra.

  ‘It is the trial ordered by Temmell’s command,’ said Alexamir. ‘When sorcerers are uncovered crossing our territory, their magic must be tested by the clan. They will be tied to stakes and set on flames. If the sorceries they possess mean the horde well, these two will survive. If it means us ill, the burning fire will cleanse them to ashes and ashes they will remain.’

  Cassandra winced. A very convenient way for Temmell to handle potential rivals to his position. These two were her enemies, but she knew the Weylanders had treated her far better than any Vandian would have done a similar prisoner-of-war. And now they will burn for it.

  NINE

  A SKYGUARD FOR THE NOMADS

  Carter had grown used enough to the prod of swords, jabbing spear butts and slaps from his Nijumeti guards, but the sight of dry kindling and straw being piled around the pair of stakes outside made his heart grow cold.

  ‘Are they cannibals fixing to roast us?’ Carter whispered to Sariel, his pale knuckles gripping the bamboo bars of their cage.

  ‘Not unless these rough-hewn maltworms have picked up a new bad habit,’ said Sariel.

  Carter imagined what it would be like to be strapped to that stake, feel flames licking around his legs and skin blistering before the fire really took hold. Not a good death. But then, he had stopped believing that such a contradictory thing existed long ago. ‘I thought you said the man we sought was a friend of yours?’

  ‘A friend once, yes, but more than that, Lord Carnehan,’ said Sariel. ‘He was the leader of our group sent to frustrate the stealers’ ambitions. You might say he was the greatest of us.’

  ‘I had rather hoped that our reward for finding your sorcerer might be more than a torch put to my toes.’

  ‘Temmell will be much as you found me when first we met,’ said Sariel. ‘He has rebuilt himself and forgotten much. We must trust that curiosity brings Temmell Longgate to us, if only to witness our end.’

  ‘And then . . . ?’

  ‘That words and reason may stay our execution. You need to lay your hands on him. You are the key that will unlock him.’

  Carter stared at the bonfire tinder, trying to tread down the feeling of terror. ‘I can only do that if I’m not made into a hog-roast. If words are not enough . . . ?’

  ‘I will goad the nomads using superior insults until they set me aflame first,’ said Sariel. ‘They’ll make you watch my fate as punishment.’

  ‘That’ll make me feel better, will it?’

  ‘That stake out there is an amateur’s attempt – do they think to bring an end to the miraculous Sariel with twigs and straw, with a mere tepid tickling? When the stealers ambushed my party the devils used flame-squirts and napalm to render me to ashes, then scattered my remains across Pellas. It took me centuries to heal! My blackened corpse will start moving, healing itself. It will be proof of my sorcery and the Nijumeti will be far too terrified to turn on you.’

  They’ll be terrified! ‘What if they light a torch on me first to punish you?’

  ‘You have a melancholy turn of mind, Lord Carnehan.’

  ‘Water rations,’ announced a voice. ‘We don’t need you so thirsty you will faint during your trial.’

  Carter quickly glanced up. That voice? It was Sheplar and Kerge standing outside his cage. They’re alive! They both wore Nijumeti leather slave collars around their necks. A sign that nobody but their master could kill or claim them without a blood price being extracted.

  ‘It is as I told you,’ said the Rodalian aviator. ‘A dark leather coat with many tales drawn across it. Who else could it be?’

  ‘And Carter Carnehan,’ said Kerge. ‘I wish we were reunited under happier circumstances, manling.’

  Carter shook the cage’s bars in excitement. ‘Sweet saints, but it’s good to see you two! Can you get us out of here?’

  Sheplar glanced around between the tents. Dozens of warriors lounged in front of open cooking fires, drinking and laughing. Not so drunk yet that they would miss a pair of camp thralls trying to force open the cage’s door. ‘You must be patient.’

  ‘I shall try to convince the mistress of my tent to intervene,’ said Kerge. ‘We have both been taken by the horde for thralls. My owner is a powerful seer, a witch rider. She loathes Temmell and will do anything she can to frustrate his plans. If he says you are to burn, she will wish to set you free. At the very least, you may be put to work as slaves here alongside us.’

  ‘I never thought I’d be glad to be a slave again,’ said Carter. ‘But it’s a whole lot better than being ashes.’

  ‘We will not be thralls for long,’ said Sheplar. ‘We are planning to escape and warn Rodal about the horde.’

  ‘They’ve already heard about the clans uniting under some grass king called Kani Yargul,’ said Carter. ‘Your leaders in Hadra-Hareer seemed as worried about the horde as they are of Weyland’s civil war spilling over into Rodal. The border fortresses are preparing to repulse riders.’

  ‘It is not horsemen they will face,’ said Sheplar. ‘The Nijumeti have built themselves a skyguard.’

  ‘What? They can’t have!’ said Carter. Then he remembered that mysterious aircraft they had seen out above the plains. Not a merchant shuttle after all.

  ‘I assure you it is true. It is why I am alive. Rodalians make poor stable-thralls and tent slaves, but as someone who understands a flying wing . . . the horde’s sorcerer, Temmell, keeps me labouring inside their new air-works.’

  A pair of warriors came strutting past and Kerge lifted the water bucket while Sheplar took a wooden ladle and passed water between the bars, as if this was their purpose here.

  ‘Temmell Lon
ggate is still in the steppes,’ said Sariel, glowing with satisfaction as the warriors left their earshot.

  ‘You dishonourable old vagrant,’ swore Sheplar, shaking his ladle at the trickster. ‘What do you know of Temmell? Is this another of your deranged schemes to see your friends perish for you?’

  ‘It is not for the pigeon to understand where the eagle intends to fly,’ said Sariel.

  ‘It is not the pigeon trapped inside the cage here, old fool,’ hissed Sheplar. ‘I have been fashioning a flying wing of my own out of junk the nomads think too ruined to be used. Under Temmell’s direction, riders have dragged the wreckage of every crashed carrier they can find back here. They no longer strip wrecks for sword metal. Kani Yargul adds scavenged materials to supplies smuggled in from the despicable Hellenise. Through Temmell’s devilry, a primitive skyguard has been raised.’

  ‘But surely the Nijumeti won’t be a match in the air for your fighters?’ asked Carter.

  ‘With surprise on their side? It is not only flying wings that are being fashioned out on the steppes. Temmell is building engine-less gliders for the Great Krul. Craft large enough to carry horses and riders.’

  Gliders? Carter cursed. So it is to be a full invasion of Rodal by the horde. Bad enough Carter’s father and Willow faced the combined might of Vandia and Bad Marcus’ southern armies. How can they survive a nomad invasion, as well? The Walls of the World had always stood firm against the nomads. But a wall that could simply be flown over was no longer much of a fortification.

  ‘Take the element of surprise away from the clans, and Rodal has a fighting chance. Gliders are slow and unwieldy. Easy prey to a wing gun,’ said Sheplar. He stared sadly at Carter and Sariel. ‘But the flying wing I am constructing has only two seats. For myself and Kerge. I have not enough parts to build larger. If I did, I would have made space to carry the young bumo away with us, too.’

  Bumo? The aviator meant the emperor’s granddaughter. ‘Lady Cassandra is a slave here, too?’

  ‘Not so much a slave, manling,’ explained Kerge. ‘She is to be the saddle-wife of a local rogue.’

  ‘You need not concern yourself with the girl,’ said Sheplar. ‘Her use as a hostage is at an end. The bumo’s back was broken when her flying wing crashed here. The Vandians have already come calling in force for her, only to reject the girl as a cripple. She is not a thrall here. She is an exile.’

  Carter almost felt sorry for the young noblewoman. Then he remembered how half his friends had died in her family’s sky mines working, and a good many others slain escaping the Imperium’s clutches. ‘Hard customs, which too many of us tasted. Maybe it’s only justice that she’s had a little of it back.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sheplar. ‘Still, I would take her if I could. She was under our protection. But I have no time. If Rodal is not warned of Kani Yargul’s new skyguard . . .’

  ‘You don’t need to hammer together a carrier,’ said Carter. ‘Not for us or Lady Cassandra. When your bird is sturdy enough to fly away from here, you two both hightail it. Warn Rodal. Whatever happens to us, happens to us.’

  ‘Have you forgotten our task?’ asked Sariel.

  ‘It’s my family in Hadra-Hareer I need to remember,’ said Carter. ‘I agreed to follow you. I never agreed to let Willow and my father die back in the mountains.’

  Sariel pointed at Sheplar and Kerge. ‘You must bring Temmell here to view the test of fire.’

  ‘Does the master take orders from the slave?’ Sheplar looked cross.

  ‘Then beg him not to come, and let him arrive to spite you,’ said Sariel. ‘I care not how it is arranged. Fail and the fire that starts here will end with the light of the world extinguished.’

  ‘Your light, perhaps.’ Sheplar sounded like that might be just punishment, as well. ‘If there is a god of boastful braggarts, then he will count the loss hard.’

  ‘Talk sense to this flying fool,’ Sariel demanded of Carter.

  ‘We will do what we can,’ whispered Kerge, the gask tugging Sheplar back. Any longer at the cage and the two thralls would be joining the execution.

  Carter watched his two friends disappear. Dear God, I know I haven’t done much by your teachings recently, but help those two get us out of this. There’s got to be some good in what I’ve been doing somewhere.

  ‘If I burn first and you survive,’ said Sariel, as serious as Carter had ever heard him speak, ‘you will need to pass me my memories back as well as healing Temmell. Exactly as you did in the sky mines.’

  ‘Your memories don’t haunt me like they used to,’ said Carter. ‘Are you sure they’re still there?’

  ‘The mind is a marvellous thing, Lord Carnehan,’ said Sariel. ‘That you do not feel their weight is only a testimony to my skill as a healer. You have a very sound dam constructed inside your mind to hold them. But a key you were made and a key you remain.’

  ‘You healed me,’ sighed Carter. ‘If it comes to it, I’ll do the same for you.’

  ‘Good, then a bargain has been struck,’ said Sariel. He stood alongside Carter and gripped the cage’s bars, gazing at the twin stakes beyond. ‘There’s nothing I hate so much as dying.’

  Hell, I wish I could feel as certain as you about my chances of resurrection.

  Every Rodalian charge came accompanied by hideous blood-curdling screams, answered from inside the farm buildings by the chattering roar of modern Imperium rifles. Many of the barbarians clutched single-shot breech-loading weapons, or long, spindly six-shot rifles with revolver-style rotating cylinders; but what the Rodalians lacked in firepower they made up for in massed numbers. Squads of three or four warriors charging in from multiple directions with bayonets glinting, leaving the cover of the village streets and testing the defenders’ positions for weaknesses. Bullets thudded against the walls of Duncan’s makeshift fortress, shutters torn off their narrow slit-like windows by grenade blasts. When enemy grenadiers came sprinting towards the farm buildings, they swung spherical wooden grenades like bolas above their heads, spinning the munitions so fast you’d think their short burning fuses would be extinguished. Duncan ducked as a fiery blast blew in through the window slit he protected. The thick wall shook from the impact but didn’t breach. Nothing of this engagement was as Duncan had imagined it should be. His view of the battle restricted to a four-inch-wide slit of the street, enemy warriors sprinting past, less than a second to trigger a return shot from his rifle. Missing or hitting. Impossible to tell with the thunderclap of rifle fire from legionaries by his side. People falling outside. Legionaries dragged down bleeding from the rooftop into the safety of the room, twisting and turning in agony across the floor as bandages were applied. Curses and screams and dying on all sides. The clatter of empty magazines tossed behind on to tiles, the click of fresh ammunition clips slapped into place. Bolts on the side of the rifles banging back, hundreds of spent ammunition casings rattling hot across the floor. Casings and blood to slip on when you tried to turn and shift your tense, cramped muscles. The company had piled up every piece of furniture they could find against the thick wooden door, now so splintered by the enemy fusillade that it was a wonder the door still held in place. The burnt odour of cordite mingled with smoke from the weapons discharge, filling Duncan’s nostrils with nothing but the acrid smell of burning.

  Paetro dashed down the simple wooden staircase leading to the roof. ‘Sappers attempting to blow the corner!’

  Duncan surrendered his window slit to a wounded legionary and sprung across to the stairs, metal casings rolling under the soles of his boots, a handful of defenders pushing behind him to answer Paetro’s call. If one building goes down here we’ll lose them all. A regiment’s worth of Rodalians will be clambering over the rubble and looking to stick us with the cutlery on the end of their rifles.

  ‘We’re out of grenades,’ shouted Paetro.

  Duncan ducked behind the low wall of the flat roof terrace. Legionaries on either side exchanged shots with warriors on the opposite rooftops.
Paetro and Kenem Posda were just down from him. They were shooting on single shot rather than automatic bursts to conserve ammunition. Duncan saw what Paetro had spotted. Perhaps forty enemy soldiers moving along the street to the right. A group of six attackers manhandled what looked like a wooden battering ram. But rather than a simple blunt steel-reinforced head, the ram’s sides were fixed with kegs of powder. They jam that anywhere along our walls and we’re going to have rubble for a flank.

  Duncan raised his rifle and sighted on the figures in the street, pumping three or four shots into the advancing warriors. Rifles crackled beside the young Weylander. Fire returned towards him, cracking masonry away, fleeting in from the other rooftops and the street he’d just targeted. The squad carrying the explosive battering ram arrowed into the lee of the closest buildings, almost out of the field of fire of Duncan’s rifle. The ram’s escort shot from the hip as they advanced, one bullet taking the legionary to Duncan’s left straight in the forehead. The Vandian soldier tumbled over the wall and down into the street below, falling across a pair of dead Rodalians, another corpse to be buried.

  ‘Too close,’ snarled Paetro.

  Duncan turned as furious yells resounded across two other streets, fresh waves of warriors charging through the village in force, obviously timed to give the defenders something to worry about other than that battering ram.

  The salvo of the rooftop sharpshooters turned into a hail of bullets as the charging soldiers opened up on the farm building in concert, dust and masonry crackling around Duncan. Before he could duck down there was a massive explosion. Duncan glanced down to try to find where the battering ram had blasted its way into the farm building, but then he saw the column of smoke rose streets away. Where the road had been boiling over with charging Rodalians, now it was a cratered mess filled with fire, smoke and confusion. As Duncan stared dumbfounded there was a scream overhead, an aircraft passing low at speed. Not a helo or one of the Vandians’ rocket-driven patrol ships. Then another plane and another, a wave of thumping explosions rising out of Ganyid Thang and washing warm air across his cheeks.