by Stephen Hunt
‘I don’t feel a thing,’ said Eshean, reaching for his sword.
Carter stopped him as he realised what the abattoir worker wanted to do. No trophies. ‘We’re not savages.’
‘They’re just meat now, that’s all they are to me.’
‘We better change location quick,’ said Carter, chambering another round into his rifle. ‘We need to be down the street when their friends come visiting.’
‘Bushwhacking, bushwhacking,’ sang Caleb. ‘For our picnic they came packing, and when down they were sitting, we got the lot bushwhacking.’
He’s running high on the tension… maybe far too tight. ‘Keep it together,’ growled Carter as they ran down the stairs, checking the street, then lighting out for a pottery overlooking a crossroad.
‘One shot.’ Caleb raised a finger, laughing. ‘Just one shot. Wish I could do this to the head doorman at the Grand. This is living.’
No, you idiot, it’s dying – it’s them, or us.
‘Save it for the bandits,’ said Joah, glancing worriedly at his friend.
They took up position in the pottery. As before, they climbed upstairs for height, sliding the windows open on the second storey. They had a view of its terrace, a striped canopy over the pavement and a sniper’s sight of the street; Caleb laughing and joking, Eshean as dour and brutal as a block of granite, Joah blinking through his big milk-bottle glasses and Carter maybe as cold as they thought he was. They waited for the sound of their ambush to bring more of the twisted bandits running, but come the raiders didn’t. Guns crackled in the distance, brief bursts of fire being exchanged.
Sounds like the four of us aren’t the only ones having luck ambushing bandits. ‘There should be more raiders,’ said Carter.
‘Saint’s teeth, Carter,’ said Joah. ‘What you hoping for? A cavalry charge of those horse-sized lizard monsters?’
‘I mean, if the bandits were serious about looting Northhaven, they’d have put more boots on the ground. You don’t commit a light scout force to a raid.’
‘They were landing gliders on the river flats, mostly,’ said Joah. ‘I guess their main targets are the goods stored at the warehouses and the railhead? Those four we gunned could’ve been chancers, just dipping in from the main raid to see what they could loot?’
‘Not enough people inside the old town,’ said Carter, thinking out loud. ‘You’ve seen how busy it gets during market week. People crushed so tight you can hardly take a step without getting cursed by some old girl out shopping. We’ve been here maybe twenty minutes and we’ve not seen a single straggler heading up the slope.’
‘You saying we’re not going to be bushwhacking any more raiders?’ asked Caleb.
‘I’m saying it doesn’t make sense. The bandits are dive bombing us to keep us hunkered up in the old town. But why bothering corralling us if they’re not going to bother to loot Northhaven properly?’
‘If all you see is a fist, ask yourself where the hand with the knife is,’ said Joah, quoting one of the territorial sergeant’s favourite maxims.
‘Don’t think we’ve seen the knife hand yet,’ said Carter. And that had him worried, but not as much as at the sight that greeted him the next second. His parents sprinted out of the fumes from Prospect Hill, a gaggle of children behind them screaming and yelling. Carter didn’t need to be told what would be pursuing them. Caleb, Joah and Eshean jolted up and started to run back to the stairs, but Carter yelled to them, ‘Hold and shoot – keep the high position, or we’ll be setting up a crossfire with those youngsters catching bullets in the middle!’
Carter vaulted the windowsill, jumping out onto the store’s wooden terrace. He aimed his rifle towards the swirling sea of black smoke. Joah leapt behind him, then the other two men. In the street, Carter’s parents turned the corner of the crossroads, driving the gaggle of school children up the hill, so focused on hurrying the youngsters along they hadn’t spotted the four young men on the second storey of the building opposite. They’ll hear this, though. Six or seven bandits came sprinting out of the wall of smoke to meet a hail of bullets, the painful buck of the rifle butt slamming against Carter’s shoulder as he worked its brass lever. He worked the trigger guard so hard his finger blistered up. Smoke from the others’ guns drifted across Carter’s vision, sulphur filling his nostrils. Through it, he could just see raiders dropping to the cobbles, bandits holed and a few still thrashing. His fusillade hadn’t made any difference to the pupils from the school… the kids pelting up the street, each one following the next.
Carter’s parents glanced to the rear as the four young men swung down over the canopy, hitting the raised wooden walkway in front of the shop. They retreated backwards with their guns ready to cut down the next wave of raiders.
‘I see signal smoke coming from the keep!’ shouted Joah, pressing a fresh round into his rifle’s breech as he fell back. ‘They’re going to drop the portcullis on us.’
Please, not yet! Other men from the deputed mob came running out of a side-street, attracted to the violence like trout to a fishing lure. The melee quickly became a nightmare. Bandits emerging from the smoke and fires burning in surrounding streets, the Northhaven men retreating, dodging behind water butts and columns, firing wildly, and none of them faster than the slowest school children. Carter shouted with excitement and fear, the bandits shooting back, bodies dropping. More men sprinted out… some behind the raiders, others in front. Bullets zipped past Carter’s ears humming like hornets, wood splintering, masonry cracking amidst screams of rage and fear and wild exuberance. Hard to tell if Carter’s shots struck anything, there were so many bullets in the air. Bandits spun off their feet, men dragging bloody bodies out of the street and into cover, some rushing across the street with their rifles jolting, others fanning the hammer on pistols. It was madness. Fumes and puke and fear and bravado. Who could see this carnage and call what happened tactics or strategy? Just random death and hate and killing mixed with blood. More men appeared, these ones in the blue uniforms of the town constables and running down from the ramparts. Wiggins’ constables must have seen the battle breaking out and ducked in from the old town to help cover their retreat.
Carter dodged behind an unharnessed cart, using its cover to slide a fresh chain of shells into his repeater’s breech, pieces of wood splintering from the wagon as the bandits tracked in on his dash to shelter. He lifted the reloaded rifle. Carter’s eyes settled on the other side of the street and caught a sight to still his heart. His father dragging his limp mother out of the road, onto the shops’ raised walkway opposite. Children rushed away from them, a couple of locals backstepping and covering the pupils’ flight up the hill. Mother! Carter followed a strangled yell of anguish that might have been his own out across the road, bullets drifting around him as thick as rainfall and not one touching his tall, haring body. Jacob Carnehan dragged his wife into cover through the open door of a general store. Carter nearly slipped on the slick trail of blood her passage had left on the planks. Inside, his mother moaned something, the words croaking out through a froth of spittle and it was only when he knelt by her side, opposite his father, that he could hear what she was saying.
‘Get — the children — up — the hill.’
Carter clutched the hand his father wasn’t gripping. ‘Wiggins’ men have got them. They’ll be through the gatehouse any second.’ Carter could hardly keep his eyes off his mother’s stomach, ruined and bubbling from where a volley had caught her.
‘Thought I — told you — to — stay put?’
‘I carried that Rodalian pilot to safety,’ whispered Carter. ‘But who else was going to come down here and make sure everyone in the school got up the hill?’
‘Who else?’ She was staring up at Jacob, her eyes as clear as stream water. ‘You look — after — my boy now.’
Jacob Carnehan was so pale, the old man’s skin might have been whitewashed. ‘What am I going to do without you, Mrs Carnehan?’
‘I refer you — t
o my — previous answer, Mister Carnehan.’
‘Just hold on,’ Carter begged. ‘We can carry you up the hill. Hospital staff are working right behind the battlements.’
‘I need to rest — now, Carter. That — spot — behind the church — with your — two brothers.’
‘Help me carry her!’ yelled Carter.
The warmth drained from Mary Carnehan’s hand. And just like that she was gone. His mother had shut her eyes and was speaking no more. It was easy to tell. The illumination in her soul, the warmth… it had moved on. Carter’s father wasn’t in any state to register his son’s words – just clinging to Mary Carnehan and crying. No, not my mother anymore, just her body. Whatever warmth had been in Carter’s blood drained away too. He had never felt anything like this before. The pain was unbearable, welling up and twisting his heart into a helpless knot. Part of him couldn’t believe that this was happening. That he had actually watched it. Mary Carnehan must have experienced something similar when Carter’s brothers had been buried. But he had been too young at the time to understand. Too young to share the pain, to try to offer comfort. Not now. Death carried everyone away, always missing Carter by inches. Time to give it another chance. Carter stood up and checked his rifle. Seven rounds heavy. It wasn’t a gun. It was just a tool, and its work lay outside. All his feelings wasted away, along with the fear and the adrenaline and the worry and the anguish. What was left? Just a hungry void. And it needed feeding. Carter stepped out of the general store. The street filled with Northhaven men running and dodging, bandits advancing up the hill and mixed in with the town’s defenders. Carter stepped through the smoke and the flying bullets of a bad dream, sending one of the twisted men whirling with his first shot.
‘How do you like that? Here I am! It’s my turn!’
It was a start, a single pebble tossed into the pit, and he had a canyon that needed filling. Eshean was ahead of him, the abattoir worker out of bullets for his pistol and taking his short-sword to the raiders, a company of them alongside one of their riding beasts, two raiders on top, big iron pipes on either side of its scaly green flanks. Carter worked the brass lever under his rifle, bandits dropping around the abattoir man as his gun bucked. Eshean was lost to the world. The big man had his own void that needed filling, no doubt.
‘Come on! Is that it?’ Bullets whizzed past him, but they always missed. A bullet for everyone but me. ‘How can you sons-of-bitches keep on missing me?’
‘Carter!’ Jacob Carnehan stood in the doorway of the general store, shouting towards his son. Carter levered a shell into one of the ugly twisted raiders sprinting towards him. The pastor had the saints and angels and maybe even God to fill his void. But this was all Carter had. Let me be.
‘Carter, get—’
The rest of his father’s words were lost in the double explosion from the weapon tubes on either side of the riding beast. The creature bucked, nearly throwing the two bandits – its gunners – over their mortar. Carter just had time to glance around and mark the collapsing cascade of timber where the general store had been located, smoke and vapour and fire where his father should have been standing. Father! No! Both parents dead. His mother and then his father. Murdered. It wasn’t pain he felt now. It was anger. An endless boiling sea of it. Pure white-hot fire. Every one of these murdering bastards was going to die. If death wouldn’t take Carter Carnehan, he’d keep on prodding and poking the grim reaper until it damn well took notice. Until every raider in the prefecture was a corpse. Or I am. He strode forward; ignoring the inhuman screeching until he realised it was coming from his own throat. His gun bucked and the nearest raider went down, shot in the spine, even while it struggled with a Northhaven man. That was a fine sight. Carter took aim again, but then a second mortar’s shell impacted forward of the first. Another storefront came tumbling down, its explosion lifting Carter up and forward. He flew wingless, just like so many dreams that had been mere premonitions of this moment. Carter hardly felt the cobbles of the road scouring his body into a bloody mess as he struck and rolled. Still time, to fill the hole. Still time to kick death until it turned round and took notice. He staggered to his feet. Carter’s eyes settled on his Landsman – the finest rifle in the Kingdom of Weyland – split in half as clean as if it had been designed that way. His ears rang, the sounds of the raid distant and tinny. His lips split and mouth full of dust. Something red filled Carter’s eyes. As he blinked away the sticky, gluey liquid, he was just in time to focus on the end of the rifle butt growing massive in front of his face.
After that there wasn’t much of anything.
THREE
LOSS IS CHANGE
There wasn’t any particular moment when Jacob Carnehan regained awareness. If his body was a beach then his mind was a tide, rising and falling, steadily dipping in and out. A bare awareness of light and broken wood being pulled off him, faces drifting backward and forward, voices, darkness, more whispering, memories and pain – physical and of the soul and heart – tugging him below the undertow. Time passed. Jacob’s body would twitch and his eyes would blink, water being spooned through his parched lips, something warm that might have been soup, the taste of carrots and barley, before the darkness grew cold and total and he could not stop shivering.
Finally, something built within him, an ache, a pain so sharp, swelling and growing, that it finally carried him to full consciousness. Sweating and weak and light-headed. Jacob lay in bed – his own, the room with a view over Church Lane, the weight of a dozen blankets pressing down upon his body. There were two people in the room, waiting on chairs on either side of his bed – Constable Wiggins on the left. On the right, another familiar face. Brother Frael from the old monastery in the mountains, a place of peace overlooking the Lancean Ocean’s green depths. As always, the brother seemed to carry the smell of the sea on his simple grey habit. A sallow, wide face, an open and friendly countenance with skin as tight as dried seaweed.
Jacob summoned enough energy to speak, the whisper rustling out over chapped lips. ‘Where’s Carter?’
‘Stay down,’ advised Brother Frael, reaching over to lay a hand on the rough woollen blankets.
‘Where is—?’
‘As close to death as I ever seen a man sail,’ said Wiggins, ‘and he comes out of the other end just as stubborn as he fell.’
‘You need to rest,’ said Brother Frael, scratching the bald scalp of his tonsure.
‘Man needs the facts,’ said Wiggins, ‘and he won’t be much for resting until he gets them, if you ask me.’
The monk clicked his teeth in irritation.
‘Truth is,’ said Wiggins. ‘As far as Carter is concerned, we don’t know. Almost all of the new town was burnt to ash. After your school children were brought in, the raiders took umbrage at the bloody nose they’d been given on the hill. Flew in again with dive bombers and flattened what wasn’t already burning.’
‘I have seen where you were pulled out,’ said Brother Frael. ‘It is the only part of the street not torched to embers – a miracle, truly.’
Wiggins shrugged. He obviously didn’t share the monk’s sentiments. ‘Not much of a one for the rest of our people, Brother. We’ve come across hundreds of bodies in the ashes, too burnt to identify. The cruel truth of it, Jacob, is that Carter’s either dead or one of the quarter of the town’s people unaccounted for.’
‘Slavers,’ hissed Jacob.
‘Ain’t that the truth of it. Anyone my age they rounded up, they left on the other side of the river road minus their skulls. More corpses out in the fields than we’ve recovered from the new town’s wreckage.’
‘How long?’ moaned Jacob. ‘How long have I been like this?’
‘This is the sixth day since we dug you out,’ said Wiggins.
‘I and the other friars came down from the monastery on the train,’ explained Brother Frael. ‘To handle the burials and services.’
On the train? The monks’ vows included travelling only by foot and eating who
lly from the wooden begging bowls they carried with them. That was enough to tell Jacob how bad things were outside his room.
‘I’m sorry, Jacob,’ said Wiggins. ‘We had to do Mary’s service already, you understand? We put her next to your two kids out back. Figured that’s what she would have wanted.’
‘The mayor demanded we dig mass graves,’ said Brother Frael. ‘But he relented when we refused and said we would carry out only individual services. Mary’s final candle was lit by my own hand, as gentle as any service ever conducted.’
Jacob pushed himself up. Mary. He had almost been able to imagine that her death was a bad dream. A premonition never come to pass. But it wasn’t. He tried to speak, but only a dry keening noise left his lips. My wife, my darling wife. What am I going to do without you? How will I live? How can I go on from here? Where would there be, indeed, to even go to? She had been his anchor, his rock and his conscience. His best part. He recovered his composure for a second. ‘I need to see.’
‘Lie back down,’ commanded the monk.
‘Where my wife is buried,’ said Jacob, pushing his legs out from under the mountain of blankets enveloping him. I need to see her.
‘Listen to the man,’ urged Wiggins.
‘Hold my side,’ ordered Jacob. ‘Bear me up. I’ll see her grave now.’
Grumbling, the constable took Jacob’s weight, ignoring the monk’s despairing gaze and Jacob slid his heavy, trembling weight, step by step, down the rectory stairs.
Brother Frael opened the door of the boot room and Jacob felt the raw slap of cold outside. Northhaven was a sight to see, the hill bare and black. Only the wreckage of the occasional store or home stood, a grid of grey in the black where streets had once been, the walls of the old town streaked dark with soot. Smoke coiled from the chimneys of buildings hidden behind the ancient battlements. Up in the air, barrage balloons still swung in the wind, as if the town expected a second raid.