The Stealers' War

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘You-man spare Del-alass?’ pleaded the skel.

  ‘I’ll make you a deal, Del-alass,’ said Jacob. ‘You lead us true to my friend’s brother and I won’t put a bullet in your ugly head. Does that sound like an amiable arrangement?’

  Del-alass nodded rapidly, only too eager to agree, before leading them through a warren of gangways inside the wing. The Razored Smile’s interior wasn’t much different from the merchant carrier Jacob had taken during his pursuit of Carter. Narrow corridors, most of the walls and decks made from treated paper pulp that resembled wood but a dozen times lighter and stronger, hatches giving on to larger chambers, cabins and hangars. Everything weathered by age, patched walls that spoke of the city-sized aircraft having flown up here for numberless centuries. She wasn’t used to travelling so low in gravity’s hold, though, creaking from every beam like a rickety nautical sailing ship. Her decks trembled every time her cannons joined the fight outside. Sounds of distant combat echoed around the corridors, muffled shots and screams from both attackers and crewmen. That’s what I remember from their raid on Northhaven – how human the skels sounded when dying. Jacob could taste cordite on the air. This bird was still running on recycled cabin air, a slightly damp, musty smell with her pressurization machinery circulating the whiff of the boarding action. But then, the bridge crew had other things on their mind than venting in fresh air. The angle of the Razored Smile’s deck grew steep as she attempted to climb out of the range of the swarming war kites. Too little, too late. Occasionally the three of them ran into other crewmen, unarmed skels who took one look at the two Weylanders holding a pistol on Del-alass, before turning tail and fleeing in the opposite direction.

  Del-alass led them through the aircraft and into the wing’s engineering chamber which showed all the hallmarks of having been recently abandoned – long workbenches covered with disassembled engine parts, metalworking lathes still with pieces inside their clamps. A wall of numbered hatches led off in the direction of the propellers; behind one of the open doorways Jacob caught sight of a leathery russet face.

  ‘Come on out!’ barked Jacob. His first thought, that this might be a gask, turned out to be incorrect. A similar leathery face, but instead of a spine-covered skin, there were cyan-tinged feathers around the twisted woman’s neck. Another skel slave, this one from an unfamiliar race and country.

  ‘James Kurtain,’ demanded Anna. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘James was taken away,’ answered the slave. ‘Everyone was rounded up when the plane’s bells sounded for combat. I hid in the rotor’s crawl space so they wouldn’t find me.’

  Damn – the duke doesn’t want his house slaves making trouble for him during the battle when the majority of his warriors are outside in their fighter planes. An efficient commander made everything more difficult for Jacob. ‘Where?’

  ‘The guards said we needed to be locked up inside the slave holds.’

  Ready-built pens. Where else.

  ‘Del-alass am not know this!’ cried the skel.

  ‘Del-alass get his chance to make it up by leading us across to the slave pens,’ said Jacob.

  Anna waved her pistol at the female slave. ‘Hide. When soldiers who look like us come to secure this deck, you make sure you tell them where the slaves were taken.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised.

  Jacob and Anna let the skel lead them deeper into the plane, gangways growing wider after they left the wing and entered the main body of the massive carrier. This is where the bulk of the boarding action was ongoing – they came across skel corpses sprawled across the decking, empty shell casings scattered across the floor, no sign of Rodalian casualties. Jacob noted none of the dead crew carried firearms, only cutlasses and daggers. I reckon the duke up here isn’t the trusting sort. That’ll cost him dearly today.

  ‘We have to hurry,’ said Anna, not bothering to hide the worry in her voice. ‘You know what the slavers will do to our people when they realize their carrier has been taken.’

  ‘Who is in charge of the slave pens, Del-alass?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Si-lishh.’

  Name sounds familiar. Is he the same killer Carter told me about? ‘And I’m guessing the fellow isn’t what you’d call a good man.’

  ‘Am of the family-Si,’ said the crewman, as though that should be answer enough. ‘He strangle father of Del-alass dead for winning in chance-game. Not mercy for groundlings. Not mercy for toiler skels. Never from Si-lishh.’

  ‘Saints hate a sore loser,’ said Jacob.

  The three of them encountered a squad of seven Rodalian soldiers. Jacob only just managed to stop the troops immediately opening up on their prisoner, catching Jacob and Anna in the crossfire. The Rodalians looked like air pirates themselves, warm padded sheep-pelt-lined coats, bandoleers of shells, short-barrelled carbines, smoke-blackened faces, blood-soaked cutlasses and half-empty grenade pouches. Looks like they’ve been sucked backwards through an engine exhaust and come out fighting. The troops fell eagerly enough behind Jacob when they heard of the recently filled slave pens.

  After they reached the slave hold, Jacob found himself on a walled gantry high above a large chamber. Gloomy below with only a handful of tiny portholes for light, stairs on either side leading down to dozens of long cages with narrow walkways running between them. And every slave pen packed with the prisoners who kept the skels’ flying citadel high in the sky. Dozens of skel guards sheltered behind the makeshift barricade in gantries flanked by the pens. They clutched whips or razored cudgels attached to portable batteries, but no firearms Jacob could see. Not even the one who had to be Si-lishh – a giant among skels, almost as wide as he was tall. The skel’s a brute, but he isn’t a stupid brute. The plane’s slave master must have watched the flight of war kites and heard the fierce boarding action raging through the carrier, then calculated the anaemic odds of his survival with most of the skel fighting force in the air outside the Razored Smile. Si-lishh and his guards had used their time well. The corridors outside the slave pens stood lined with rows of fuel barrels, fused and ready to burn. Yes, a sore loser all right. Si-lishh was willing to turn his little fiefdom up here into an inferno if things went the wrong way for him.

  ‘Whips and shock cudgels against pistols and rifles,’ shouted Jacob. ‘Might be it’s time for you to surrender, Si-lishh.’

  ‘Not surrender,’ yelled the large skel, confirming his position as slave master. ‘Weylander am let Si-lishh leave with flying boat, or Si-lishh be cooking groundlings into most tasty meal.’

  Anna ground her teeth in frustration. ‘If he puts a match to the fuse we’ll never break our people out of the cages in time.’

  ‘If Si-lishh am escaping,’ whispered their skel prisoner, ‘Si-lishh am hiding timer to burn slaves and destroy Razored Smile. Kill all-people in air.’

  ‘Not exactly what you’d call an oath-keeper?’ said Jacob. Why doesn’t that surprise me? He aimed his pistol carefully into the gantry below, sighting on the large skel. ‘I let him go, they burn. I put a bullet in him, they burn.’ I know which outcome I prefer.

  ‘No!’ cried Anna.

  ‘There’s no other way. If we’re quick enough, we can still get your brother out.’

  ‘Not gun,’ urged Del-alass. He indicated the knife hanging from Jacob’s belt. ‘Champion’s knife. Charity of battle. All skels am honour this.’

  ‘A champion’s combat?’ said Anna. ‘That killer would actually honour that?’

  ‘Guards am honour it,’ said Del-alass. ‘When Si-lishh dead.’

  Jacob sized up the ogre down below. ‘The hell you say.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Anna. ‘It’s my brother inside one of those cages.’

  Jacob shook his head. ‘You’re not as fast as you used to be, Miss Kurtain, not after you got carved up in Midsburg.’

  ‘I can fight,’ she insisted.

  ‘And you can fail, and I’ll be surrounded by flames while trying to guess which one of the hundreds caged up do
wn there is your brother,’ said Jacob. ‘You stay here and leave the slave master to me. If I die, at least you’ll have a chance of pulling your brother out of the cages.’

  Anna’s face flushed with exasperation. ‘This is mine to do.’

  ‘No,’ growled Jacob. ‘His clan put Mary in the ground just for helping her students escape the sword. His clan carried away Carter and the boy’s friends and sold them off like cattle. Anyone too old or too young to serve as a slave, they left decapitated in the fields around Northhaven, discarded like so much butcher’s offal. Bad Marcus blessed the raid and Vandia paid for it, but that son-of-a-bitch was one of the demons who swung the sabre. So no, Miss Kurtain, this is very much mine to do.’ He stood up and gazed down into the slave pens. ‘I know you, Si-lishh. You held my son Carter Carnehan up here as a prisoner inside your stinking hold. When you sold him to the House of Skar as a miner, he promised you he’d be back here to kill you one day. He sends his apologies for being otherwise occupied right now. I’ve come to honour my boy’s word. I’ve come to offer you the charity of battle if you’ve got the guts to fight an old man with a knife.’

  Si-lishh hissed sibilant laughter. ‘Groundling am not born to defeat Si-lishh.’

  ‘You stick a blade in me right, you’ll get your flying boat,’ said Jacob. ‘You can light out of here and find another damn bandit carrier who needs a murderer with a taste for whipping chained slaves. But if I slice you up, then your guards honour the duel and let these slaves live.’

  ‘Si-lishh am remembering your groundling son. Stupid as rock. Always trouble-making. With this father-blood, Si-lishh am finding madness-source.’

  Jacob passed his pistols to Anna and raised his empty hands for the slave master to see. ‘A mad old man who needs killing, then. But who’s to do it?’

  A Rodalian soldier passed Jacob an extra dagger as he walked down the stairs. The skel slavers parted for Jacob in the space between the cages. He could smell the stink of the corn ether rising from the fuel barrels. Sweet saints, give me the strength and guile to win here. Nobody is getting out of here alive if these barrels are torched. Si-lishh came forward and tossed his whip contemptuously aside to the floor. Jacob threw the spare dagger, watching Si-lishh catch it while Jacob drew his own blade. ‘This is for Northhaven. For everyone who died there. For everyone dragged to Vandia who never saw their home again.’

  ‘Si-lishh remember town. Fine raid. Old groundlings am beg for much-young groundlings’ lives. But weak groundlings not good for Si-lishh. Tiny groundlings worthless. Not able work sky mines, not able to survive. Chop chop chop. Skulls off. Boots am wet with groundling-blood that day. Fine raid. Take plenty!’

  Jacob fought to master his fury. This was what the slave master wanted. To goad Jacob into a killing rage where he attacked without thought. Where Si-lishh could easily carve him into pieces. Jacob dropped into a guard position. ‘It’s never the ones you take who’ll kill you. It’s only the ones you leave alive.’

  ‘Am fix-mistake!’ Si-lishh rushed Jacob, slashing out with his blade. Jacob danced back trying to counter using a tight sabre-grip, but the skel blocked him with an arm the width of a tree trunk, then they warily circled each other. The skel attacked again, and Jacob tried a high cut to the skel’s forehead, put enough blood in his eyes to blind him. But wherever this skel had learnt to brawl, it wasn’t just taking his whip to chained slaves. Si-lishh pivoted and tried to put one in Jacob’s gut, but the Weylander just saw the move in time and blocked it. Stopping the skel from filleting Jacob was like taking a beating from an oak tree wielded by a giant. They continued their desperate duel, but the monster’s endurance started to wear on Jacob. Old man. Proud old man. You’re not Quicksilver anymore. Not the young general that swept across the Burn. You’re just what’s left of him. Searching for a warm comfortable grave and maybe this time you’ve found it.

  Si-lishh came again, slashing out and Jacob turned, caught the hand, twisting it sideways to disarm the slave master. The skel’s dagger flew away, tumbling between a slave pen’s bars. Jacob tried to turn the caught arm into a lock-hold and slide his own dagger into the skel’s neck, but the demon wasn’t keeping still for his trick. Si-lishh pushed back, unbalancing Jacob, then Si-lishh booted Jacob in the abdomen and sent him sprawling to the floor in front of one of the cages. The slaves inside yelled desperate encouragement for the man who was trying to save them, but their pleas didn’t do much to balance out the uneven distribution of raw strength in this challenge. Jacob tried to roll over, but the massive skel was quicker, pinning him to the floor, one hand tightening around Jacob’s neck while the other snaked around to his belt on his back. The slave master suddenly flourished the weapon he had concealed behind him. It looked like a Vandian stick-grenade, its head replaced with coils of barbed wire, a bulbous primitive battery instead of a pin at the wooden handle’s end.

  ‘You truly are a sore loser,’ gasped Jacob, one hand trying to dislodge the skel’s fingers tightening around his neck, the other grasping near-uselessly at the skel’s weapon hand.

  Si-lishh forced the cudgel slowly towards Jacob’s face, sparks flashing from its ugly wires, almost blinding the Weylander. Too strong. It was like trying to wrestle with a landslide coming down a mountain. Jacob’s vision began to spot with dark circles when he heard the grate of something spinning towards him. A second cudgel.

  Del-alass. The ground crewman tumbled as the guard he’d stolen the cudgel from plunged a dagger in the skel crewman’s ribs, but Jacob’s hand had already abandoned Si-lishh’s hand locked around his neck, dragging the cudgel in, then he drove the weapon’s head into the slave master’s ribs, sparks flashing as its charge emptied. The giant went limp and Jacob flipped the skel back into the slave pen, slamming him against the iron bars. Jacob seized the giant’s dropped weapon and shoved it against the cage, triggering a second burst of energy. Si-lishh spasmed, caught in the blaze of electricity, and when the skel’s own cudgel emptied of its charge, the bars lost their hold on the slave master and he fell smoking to the deck. Jacob stared down at the dead slave master. I should feel something. Content. Happy. Instead, he just felt hollowed out, dead and joyless. What the hell am I now, that I can’t even savour the taste of a victory? I’m not Jacob Carnehan anymore. I’m not Jake Silver. I’m just a tired old man who keeps on playing the odds and cheating death for a little while longer.

  Anna and the Rodalian soldiers had used the confusion of the challenge to storm the hold, carbines raised; keeping the skel guards honest in case they proved as shameless as their commander. The slave master was dead, and from his wounds, the ground crewman who’d kept the duel on an even keel looked set to follow him.

  Jacob knelt beside the dying skel. ‘This was one game that wasn’t fixed.’

  ‘Am-charity-of-battle,’ coughed the Del-alass. ‘Am-final-father’s-battle.’ His hairless head fell back as his eyes closed.

  ‘Now, there’s a hell of a thing,’ said Anna.

  ‘That it was,’ said Jacob.

  But Anna hadn’t heard. She was already dashing towards the slave pen opposite. The mob inside parted to allow James Kurtain to the front, and her brother shook the bars fit to dislodge them.

  Jacob’s son had kept the oath he had given the slave-master. In a round-about way. And Jacob had paid Anna back a little for what he owed her. But there was another vow to keep now. The dark promise he had sworn over Mary Carnehan’s grave.

  The soldier indicated the rows of kneeling skel prisoners to Jacob, Anna and her brother. The captured slavers lined up inside the Razored Smile’s fighter hangar. At least, the ones who had surrendered were held here. ‘What do we do with them, General Carnehan?’

  ‘You know what the penalty is for being taken as a slaver inside the Lanca. There’s only ever been one. You can sail down the coast and find the same sentence on the books of every nation for a hundred thousand miles.’

  ‘So many?’ said the soldier, hesitantly.

  ‘There are
cages in this bird’s slave hold where the floor opens up like a bomb-bay, to make troublesome slaves walk the sky.’ Carter had described his captivity inside the slave pens in graphic detail to Jacob. These are the scum who threw my son in one and made him fight to the death for their amusement. ‘We won’t need to waste a single bullet on any of these killers.’

  Anna came forward. ‘You can’t!’

  ‘You watch the slavers rain down over the mountains and then tell me that.’

  ‘Not all of the skels are like the devils that raided our homes. After your fight in the slave pens, you know it.’

  ‘What I know is the job that needs doing. What do you say, Mister Kurtain? You’ve suffered and sweated inside this dirty carrier for the best half of your life. In all those years, how many benighted souls did you see pass through the holds on their way to hell? Are you of the same mind as your sister when it comes to the best way to deal with slavers? You know this’ll be justice.’

  ‘Some of the worker skels aren’t all bad,’ said James. ‘They’re like us, that way.’

  Jacob ignored the barb, if that was what it was. ‘I haven’t got the time for you to go through our prize fleet and pick out the slightly less murderous ones. I’d sell the skels in the same slave markets they traded our people, except nobody would want them. Although thinking about it, if we shipped the skels across to the Burn, the warlords would surely buy most of them for bayonet-fodder.’

  ‘We don’t execute prisoners of war. We don’t take slaves,’ insisted Anna. ‘That’s what makes us fit to be a member of the league.’

  ‘The other Lanca nations stood aside and watched our kingdom tear itself apart in civil war,’ said Jacob. ‘They’re cowards who aren’t fit to dictate the course of my war to me.’