In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘Okay, bushy-tail, you’ve got my vote. Tails up, gentlemen, we’re making for the station!’

  The four of them mounted the transporter. Anna lifted them up in a blast of cutting dust, the volcanic slope dropping away beneath the vehicle. Any unvoiced thoughts Carter entertained that Owen might be being overcautious vanished when he saw two transporters dipping behind them, vanishing in and out of the thick clouds of steam. As the enemy craft grew larger, Carter made out the crest on the transporters’ nose cones: a spider, not Princess Helrena’s two-headed eagle, and the craft’s flanks had men clinging to its sides, heavy wooden staves attached to their belts.

  ‘They’re running light and stripped!’ Owen shouted to Anna.

  ‘You think?’ she called back. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

  Owen ducked under the equipment bench, bringing out two pickaxe handles. He kept one and threw the other to Kerge. ‘Well, looks like we’re all hitters today.’

  ‘My people’s way is one of peace,’ protested the gask.

  ‘This isn’t my preferred way either, but if we don’t hold them off they’ll roast us over a burn hole to discover where the rest of our ground sensors are hidden. I’ve found our scouts dead, tied like that, before.’

  Anna banked and angled their transporter, throwing them about in the rear, engulfing the transporter in clouds so thick that Carter could hardly see the cockpit. But her aerobatics were no good. They weren’t flying a Rodalian kite here, as manoeuvrable as a hawk on the hunt. They were in a box which was designed to haul flesh and ore, with their pursuers so tight on their tail that they had to be tracking the Weylanders with equipment other than a pilot’s eyes and ears.

  ‘A few months ago I would’ve taken this handle to your skull myself,’ said Duncan.

  ‘Reckon these boys are fixing to save you the job,’ said Carter.

  ‘Who would’ve thought it? You and me swinging on the same side again.’

  ‘If the saints aren’t laughing at us, the devils and stealers surely are.’

  They pulled out of a bank of vapour. For a second, Carter couldn’t spot the two enemy transporters and allowed himself a brief shiver of elation – but that fell away as a set of rotors whizzed overhead and he realised their pursuers had been climbing for height. Five men leapt down, sweating muscles on their attackers’ bare arms bulged with the spider’s brand. Anna’s transporter rocked from side to side with the sudden impacts and new distribution of weight. Owen yelled in fury, first to wade into the melee, one of the brutes blocking his strike and lashing out with a club. Carter pulled back as a bludgeon whistled past him. Kerge knelt, mumbling some gask mantra, his pickaxe handle abandoned, but for Carter and Duncan, the induction to their terrible new trade had well and truly begun.

  Jacob came to consciousness coughing up blood. It was his own. He was in one of the army tents and screams hung in the air. Wiggins, his voice reduced to an animal-like keening. They’re still torturing him. The pastor’s body drifted in and out of agony, his bruised flesh a shifting mesh of pain. Sergeant Nix knew his business all right. It took an artist to dish out that much punishment and keep the man being questioned alive. Jacob’s head lolled against the tent post he was secured to, arms tied behind the pole and legs lashed in front. Jacob was insensible enough that it took him a minute before his gaze fell upon the bindings around his hands and ankles. Is this a joke? A trick? When he’d been worked over, the ropes had been as tight as though the bindings had been sewn shut. But now the ropes were tied in an exploding knot, a double carrick bend, same as any rowboat on the river. Ready to be given a yank and fall off. And like a gift from the saints, there was the rolled-up blanket Jacob had dug out from Northhaven’s graveyard. That blanket had been well-hidden in Jacob’s compartment back on the train. There’d been no time for anyone to travel to the train, retrieve the roll, and return to leave it here. Nor would any of Nix’s men be crazy enough to have done such a thing, even if they could. The roll sat by the side of the tent, rebuking Jacob. Tempting him. Whispering to him. Wiggins’ cries carried across the clearing again, bringing Jacob back to the world. He twisted his legs and arms, the exploding knots falling away like a conjurer’s trick, and reached for the roll. Jacob tossed the rough fabric across the tent as though he were a merchant laying out wares in a market: hell’s own trade. A leather belt as black as night, riveted with shells, the wicked patina of twin Landsman navy pattern single-action pistols holstered inside. Corruption in stamped, nickel-coated steel. Six centre-fire rounds apiece within each rotating chamber; the weight of mountains… the weight of the dead. Never so heavy, strapping it on below his grass-stained duster, the silver barrels glinting with pure evil while the ebony grips rested in near invisibility against the pastor’s black jacket. You followed me from the grave where I buried you. Down to the capital… down the rails to this clearing. You were never going to leave me alone, were you?

  Jacob staggered into the glade, using a split second to take in the scene. Sergeant Nix stood in front of a tree where Wiggins burned. Five soldiers with rifles were dotted around the clearing to deal with any natives who might come to see who was setting pyres on their territory. The troopers saw Jacob and turned, five men working rifles and chambering rounds into their guns, Nix tossing aside a burning branch and reaching for his holster. Depravity sucked the twin pistols into Jacob’s hands, the cold press of their ebony handles against his palms as the guns rocked, one soldier flung back, two, three, four, all hit. The fifth got off a shot – his rifle spurting smoke – before somer­saulting back into the tree line, his spine blown out by the heavy slug. Nix had almost cleared his gun from his holster; in the same moment his chest absorbed the full weight and velocity of a sixth shell, and he was tossed back into the fire around Wiggins’ feet, before collapsing forward and hitting the grass. The pistol in Jacob’s left hand was as light as a departing soul, the pistol in the right still leaden… not a single shot loosed.

  Jacob yanked the knife free of Nix’s belt, tossing the sergeant’s pistol into the trees as he walked to kick out the fire and cut Wiggins down. It was a slow, damp fire. Designed to linger and loosen a man’s tongue. As the constable fell against Jacob, it was clear that he’d only have lasted a couple more minutes.

  ‘You should have talked,’ said Jacob.

  ‘And we’d – all be dead,’ coughed Wiggins. ‘Who’d save the children – then?’

  Jacob lay the constable’s body down on the ground. ‘I won’t leave you here for the dog-riders to find. I’ll carry you back to Weyland soil.’

  ‘Never — did — see anything like — that. Six shots in the — stump. Six. All down — fast as lightning.’

  ‘Rest yourself.’

  Wiggins pressed something cold into the pastor’s hand. ‘On — my — marker — just write — second biggest fool — in Northhaven.’

  ‘Maybe you’re the first biggest.’ Jacob stared at the shining silver badge sitting in his palm. The constable’s badge. ‘I’m not nearly good enough for this.’

  ‘Try — to — be.’

  Jacob sat in the grass, holding Wiggins’ hand as the man passed away. How many people had Jacob sat with like this back in Northhaven? The old and the sick. Two of his three children. Mary. You only ever continued for the living. Not many of those left now. I’m cursed. And this is my fault. I was the one who wanted to go after the missing train crew; Wiggins all for staying. Jacob rose up and crossed to the other tents, splashing water across the face of Sheplar Lesh and Khow. He sliced their bonds and helped them into the clearing. Khow needed a lot of assistance… his canteen had been laced with a strong dose. Both of them stood there for a second, swaying, sick from the drugs and the vista of carnage.

  ‘A dark wind,’ muttered Sheplar. ‘What happened here?’

  ‘My muscles are paralysed,’ whispered Khow, checking his satchel still held his precious calculator. ‘My spining reflex is dead.’

  ‘It’ll come back to you,’ said Jacob. ‘Can
you follow the trail back to the maintenance train, Khow? Maybe between you and Sheplar you can carry Wiggins’ body.’

  Sheplar was still in shock. ‘He’s dead. Wiggins is—’

  ‘He went saving us. Didn’t go alone. I’ll explain as we move, just bear in mind that if you see one of our military escort, the bastards will try to kill you on sight. Don’t think there’s any troopers left out there, but…’

  ‘The woods are cursed,’ said Khow.

  ‘Not as damned as these troopers’ souls though. Take a gun apiece and head off. I’ll strip the guardsmen of supplies and follow you. What’s left here is all we’re going to have for a while.’

  The gask and Sheplar did as they had been asked. Jacob collected four of the five rifles and a single backpack, filling it with food, water canteens, ammunition and, as he’d hoped, a few of Benner Landor’s coins which Major Alock had scattered around his troops. Thieving devil. A little taste of what the troopers could expect from final divvy of the loot. A little heat for the branding iron.

  Jacob bent down by the sergeant’s body, frisking him for coins, when he realised Nix was still alive, even gut-shot. He sure was a tough, mean little bastard.

  ‘I’ve fought you before,’ Nix moaned.

  ‘Then I should’ve done a better job the first time around, saved us both some bother.’

  ‘Jacob Carnehan, my arse,’ he spat. ‘I knew I’d seen you before. Jake Silver, that’s your real name. Quicksilver is what they used to call you. Quicksilver’s Rangers, the nastiest damn regiment in the Burn, and that was quite a contested title.’

  ‘You’re wrong. That man’s dead. I held his funeral myself.’

  ‘All this time, hiding behind a dog collar.’ Nix spasmed as he laughed. ‘Put one in my head before you go, for old time’s sake. Don’t let me bleed out here. The dog-riders are going to turn up sooner or later to see who’s been setting fires on their territory.’

  ‘Anything they do to you… hell, you fought in the Burn. You’ve seen worse. You’ve done worse.’

  ‘Do it!’ Nix shouted.

  ‘There’s been enough killing.’

  ‘Put a bullet in me!’

  Jacob slipped out one of the spare pistols he had taken from the guardsmen, dropped five of the six shells from the chamber into his pocket and then tossed the pistol on the grass in front of Nix. ‘That’s all the mercy God has for you, today. One bullet. You can kill me or save it for yourself when the dog-riders turn up.’

  ‘God’s mercy,’ called Nix, crawling for the pistol as Jacob left the clearing. ‘Compared to you, I’m one of the three saints! Blood follows you, Jake Silver, it follows you like it’s a river a man can wade through.’

  Jacob wasn’t listening. Reloading his pistol with the guardsman’s shells, he walked after Khow and Sheplar, the weight of his pistols dragging him down more than the backpack slung over his shoulder. Only ever light when I’m using them. Never could work that one out.

  Jacob heard a volley of shots as he got close to the rails and for a moment he had a terrible premonition that Nix had lied to him about the train departing – imagined his two friends gunned down by the barracks car. Lurching forward, Jacob sprinted through the woods to the beginning of the trail, but when he got to the siding, he found Khow and Sheplar still alive. A dead guardsman hung out of the maintenance train, Sheplar’s pistol smoking in the air. On the ground the trooper had dropped his rifle as well as a silver metal box the size of a doctor’s bag.

  ‘He tried to shoot us, just as you said!’ For all that Sheplar had been forewarned, he still sounded shocked.

  ‘The troopers were mercenaries from the Burn before they became guardsmen,’ said Jacob. ‘Landor’s loot was enough to tempt them back into old habits.’ The pastor felt his heart sink even as he said the words. Their task had been impossible enough to begin with, funded by the richest man in the north. What were they without the money to buy back the slaves? Just itinerants on the road; minstrels with a sad story that nobody would pay to hear. The wheels had come off their wagon before they had even left the country. His old friend from Northhaven dead and murdered. How long before Sheplar and the gask either joined him or abandoned their mad, impossible pursuit?

  Sheplar looked down at Wiggins’ blackened face, then at his hands, sooty from where he had been carrying the dead constable. ‘The guards­men did that to him for money? Just for—’

  ‘It’s not something you ever want to understand, Sheplar.’ Jacob went to where Khow squatted, the gask’s long fingers examining the metal box dropped by the soldier. It had a control panel on the front like an oversized version of the gask’s abacus machine, a silver dish on top and a metallic needle protruding from the basin. A strange fizzing emanated from the device.

  ‘That sound’s not a fuse burning, is it?’

  ‘No, manling. This is a radio transmitter.’

  ‘It’s too small. The guild of radiomen’s equipment fills an entire hold. Just one of their batteries is fifty times the size of that box.’

  ‘Nevertheless, radio communications are this device’s function.’

  ‘That’s crazy. The guild mark would be placed on anyone caught with such a thing. Who would be stupid enough to risk that?’ Dangerous for the people found carrying it, equally as dangerous for any nation attempting to develop its own network. Having the guild of radiomen withdraw its services was not something any sensible state invited. It would force them to rely on slow message riders. Cut them off from foreign news. Which nation wanted the first tidings of a nomad horde coming its way to be when their border posts were overrun?

  ‘He was speaking into the machine when he saw us emerge from the woods,’ said Khow. ‘Whoever the trooper was talking to at the receiving end, it is likely they’re aware we have survived.’

  Jacob ran his hand over the steel casing, mystified. Well, the guardsmen didn’t find this in the Burn. Grapeshot, muskets and sharp sticks are all they’ve got to poke each other across the ocean.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Sheplar.

  ‘That we had better get this maintenance train heading towards Talekhard,’ said Jacob. He unslung one of the rifles and caved in the sides of the radio with his stock, its fizzing cut off in a fury of spitting sparks. ‘Before Major Alock comes back to ensure reality matches up to his story of the four of us getting butchered in the wilderness.’

  ‘How could mere killers afford this wonder?’ brooded Sheplar. ‘And why would your nation employ murderers in the first place?’

  ‘The first – hell if I know. The second, well, men like this are effective enough in their way. Sometimes, you just need the business end of a sharp sabre and not being too fussy about who’s been run through with your steel beforehand.’

  From the distance, the echo of a single lonely shot drifted on the wind. Sheplar craned his head but there was no more gunfire from within the forest. ‘What was that, I wonder?’

  ‘A little bad justice,’ said Jacob. ‘And time for us to travel on. I have a feeling there are dog-riders nearby.’

  The three of them walked back to the tree line to pick up Wiggins’ body and carry him towards the train.

  There was an explosive crack of wood as Carter blocked a blow that would’ve caved his ribs in if it had struck true. The flat rear of the transporter was a tumult of jostling, thrusting bodies, the advantage of raw strength telling in the cramped confines of the small aerial vehicle. And that edge lay with their huge attackers. Carter heard a yell of pain from Kerge as the praying gask was knocked off his knees, falling sideways with the impact of a bat. Duncan and Owen were lost behind the mass of swinging, jostling brutes dropped into their transporter’s open cage. Carter could no longer see Anna in the cockpit at the front, still weaving and swooping their craft as hard as she could, attempting to shake off the two enemy transporters dogging their tail. Whatever nation these hostiles came from, their country sure turned them out large. Carter gripped his handle with both hands, thrusting it
at the face of the man-mountain confronting him, but the slave whipped to the side and rotated his own club, bringing it around against Carter’s hand, cracking into his clammy fingers. Carter yelled in pain, fingers numb and dead and his weapon dropping towards the craft’s metal deck. The miner from the rival house moved around for another crack at Carter’s ribs, but Carter stepped forward and seized the handle first, only to be shoved back against the transporter’s mesh wall.

  ‘You’re all they’ve got?’ snarled the slave, crushing his handle against Carter’s chest. His words were exotic and guttural, the meaning only coming to Carter a second after the man had spoken, the brute’s breath hot and fetid. What do they feed them on in the other station? ‘Your territory will belong to us when the next eruption leaves you with nothing but dust.’

  Carter had nothing to say. Nothing he could say, as the slave’s pickaxe handle moved down, slowly, inexorably towards Carter’s throat. The Northhaven man couldn’t stop it. The muscles along the slave’s bare arms bulged as hard as iron. He was at least twice as strong as Carter.

  ‘Little chicken, little chicken,’ clucked the brute, ‘let’s see how well you peck after I’ve crushed your windpipe.’

  Carter hollered in rage, the heavy length of wood forcing him down, his knees close to buckling under the weight upon him. If he fell here he would only last the few seconds it took the giant slave to kick him to death.

  ‘Cluck, cluck, cluckkk-aahhh! ’ The brute’s ruddy face froze solid as his mocking call throttled in his throat. The silence was filled by an inhuman cry – a strangled screech like the fox-song that haunted Northhaven’s woodland after sundown. It came from Kerge, the gask coming into view as the enemy slave slid sideways, gask spine needles embedded in the back of the man’s skull. Not the only one dropping towards the deck either. All five enemy borderers tumbled down, puppets with their strings cut.