by Stephen Hunt
‘That you must never engage an enemy on his terms, only on your own,’ said Sariel.
‘The best victory is the one you never have to fight,’ added the gask.
Jacob checked his pistols. That may not be in my gift.
As the cab halted by the field staff at the edge of the flats, Jacob leant out of the door to talk to the men. ‘We need to get to one of the shuttles taking cargo up to the Night’s Pride.’
‘Over there,’ said a field hand, pointing to a line of stubby tri-wing planes, their nose cones open while wagons unloaded stacks of wooden crates in front. ‘Those are the tugs from the Night’s Pride. Not much comfort on a Tourian bird, though. She’s no liner up there.’
‘We require range,’ said Sheplar. ‘Not vases with flowers in our cabins.’
‘You’ll have a long journey with her,’ said the field hand. He indicated a series of buildings off to the side. ‘Pull up over there for a customs’ check before you leave.’
‘We’re going out, not coming in,’ said Jacob.
‘That’s what I told the bosses,’ shrugged the field worker. ‘Most months they don’t give a turd about what’s coming in, either. Why do you think the traffic’s so backed up in the city? These extra checks are throttling operations. We’ll be working into the night at this rate, and not with any extra money for us, of course.’
‘How long has the port been operating like this?’
‘Only started today. Maybe the prefecture wants extra paperwork to justify the revenue service’s next pay rise.’
‘That’ll be a clerk’s idea, all right,’ said Jacob, watching the official turn and walk towards the wagons drawing up behind them. Jacob spoke to the cabbie on the coach step. ‘Head straight for those triplanes over there.’
The man on the footstep grunted and with a flick of the reins, the small black carriage rolled across the salt flats, kicking up a trail of dust from its wheels.
‘Ah, that’s the spirit, Your Grace,’ said Sariel. ‘Not a fig for bureaucracy! I have travelled through a thousand countries and never once seen a line painted across the dirt delineating where one state ends and another starts. Nor found entry duties written in the grass of the meadows where I wandered.’
‘It’s coincidences I don’t care for,’ said Jacob. He could feel the wrongness of this, like a fist clenching around his heart. He sensed the desperation of the forces trying to murder him before he left the country. Someone didn’t want the expedition to succeed, and they were going to any lengths to stop it dead. No sooner had the cab halted outside the line of stubby transport planes and cargo wagons, than a rider caught up with them, his horse panting from the gallop from the customs house. ‘You there!’ he shouted at their cabbie. ‘Over to the buildings! Are you deaf? You can’t follow simple instructions?’
Jacob leaned out of the open window and snorted in derision. ‘Don’t take that tone of voice with us, sir. We’ve already had our papers cleared by the Mayor of Talekhard himself.’
‘What’s that, you say?’ The official drew his horse alongside. ‘Present them.’
‘Here they are,’ said Jacob. ‘A gask, a mountain pilot, a tramp and a pastor.’ As the custom man’s eyes widened seeing the passengers inside, Jacob slammed his door open, smashing into the official and sending his horse clattering back into a wagon. The wagon’s team of horses took fright and jolted forward. Shouting in anger, one of the wagon’s stevedores stumbled and dropped a crate. It smashed open on the ground below. Sariel hooted in approval at the mayhem.
Khow looked aghast as Jacob swung out to the dirt and booted the struggling officer in the gut as he attempted to get to his feet. ‘Manling, have you taken leave of your senses?’
Jacob reached into the semi-conscious man’s duster and pulled it aside, revealing a shoulder holster with a pistol that he tugged out and tossed away across the salt flats. Then he lifted up the man’s leg and tapped his shoes. ‘Look at this… soft, expensive leather. Customs men wear stout boots with steel caps; at least, the ones who want to keep their toes attached to their feet do. Doesn’t take long checking piles of lading before a crate slips and falls on your boots. Only two breeds of wasps that hide their stings. Criminals and secret police.’
‘And with only a police badge’s width to be slipped between the two careers,’ announced Sariel, prodding the downed official with his walking staff. ‘Not much backbone in this doghearted clotpole. Fewer morals. I can tell.’
Jacob tossed their fare to the cabbie and slapped the nearest horse’s flank, sending the cab skittling away from the triplanes. He glanced up at the wagon and the cursing stevedores. The crate the men had dropped lay broken across the dusty ground, a spill of straw, and among the packing material… a pile of heavily greased rifles. The stamp on the broken crate was still legible: Landsman Weapon Works. Gunrunners? I thought Sheplar had pegged these people as an upright crew? A female pilot ducked out from under the nose of her transport plane, the same colourful tattoos on her arms as on the pair of brokers he’d seen earlier. She waved angrily at the stevedores manhandling her cargo. An idea flashed into Jacob’s mind. A way to expedite their exit and have the aircraft above ignore all commands from the ground to land its passengers. Jacob picked up the semi-conscious official and one of the oiled rifles, tossing gun and man to the ground in front of her as the pilot ran forward. ‘It’s not your wagoners’ fault! Where’s your export licence for these weapons?’
‘What are you saying?’ demanded the pilot.
‘I’m saying that the customs officers are going to require you to land that—’ Jacob’s hand jabbed up to the sky where the Night’s Pride circled ‘—and unload your cargo until you’ve secured valid export licenses and paid transfer taxes on every gun and bullet you’ve taken on board. And you better be able to prove that these crates aren’t going to be sold to any warring nation. The league has strict rules about exporting weapons into combat.’
‘War, war?’ the pilot repeated, her features growing crimson and incredulous. ‘Of course war. You think we plan to sell rifles to fishermen with broken nets to shoot fishes in the waves? Your government are thieves. Let us buy first from your friends’ factories, pay your officials their finder’s fee, then problems! Then confiscate? No!’
Jacob pointed to the man on the ground, jabbing a thumb back to the customs house. ‘He’s just the first of them. Be plenty more along in a minute.’ Jacob pulled out their stiff oblong boarding cards. ‘And we need to travel out. We haven’t got the money to spend on another month’s rent in Talekhard’s hotels while you trade paperwork and grease government palms here.’
‘On board!’ The pilot clapped her hands together. ‘You workers, load, load! We leave now.’ She sprinted down the line of triplanes, yelling instructions at the crews in their cockpits; pilots opening windows in glass bubbles above the landing doors, shouting to each other. Airmen came running down loading ramps to spin rotors into coughing life. Ribbons of smoke began trailing from their engines as stevedores struggled up the ramps with the last of the crates.
‘A magnificent performance, Your Grace,’ said Sariel, his face glowing with admiration. The vagrant stooped down to inspect the contents of the downed man’s pockets, flourishing a couple of paper notes as happily as if he discovered a small fortune. ‘I doubt if I could have done better myself, not if I was treading the boards of the Imperial Theatre with the beautiful gaze of the Tsarina of Nera-ka on me as my motivation.’
‘You are not always a truthful man,’ Sheplar told Jacob, his tone a lot less admiring. He tried to snatch the stolen money off Sariel, but the tramp danced back out of reach.
‘I know how much fuel they burn landing one of those city-sized carriers and taking off again. They have to stay flying at high altitude if they’re to turn a profit this side of winter.’
‘In that much you’re correct,’ said Sheplar.
Jacob kicked one of the rifles left dropped on the ground. ‘And I thought you said the Tour
ians were an upright crew?’
‘Tourians, upright?’ laughed Sariel. ‘You are thinking of their southern neighbours, the Touresekians. These people are of base descent who would hawk their grandmother to a skel slaver if the price were right.’
‘Be quiet, smelly one,’ Sheplar swore. ‘Your mind’s been addled from drinking too much rotgut.’
Jacob dipped down and grabbed the lapels of the customs officers, pulling out one of his pistols and shoving it against the bruiser’s skull. ‘Who’re you working for?’
‘Go to hell!’
‘You’ve been told to look out for the three of us, haven’t you? Who set you up to it?’
‘You’re dead men, all of you.’
Jacob slapped the officer across the face with his pistol’s ivory-handled grip. ‘Quite possibly, but you’re heading to hell first.’
‘You won’t shoot me, churchman.’
Jacob cocked the pistol. ‘How sure are you of that?’
‘Go to hell.’
Jacob slapped the man harder and pushed the barrel between his teeth. Khow appeared and rested his long gnarled fingers on the pistol. ‘This is not you, manling. Do not do this thing.’
Jacob hesitated, fighting the anger surging up inside him. ‘You tell whoever set you to this that they’ll find out who I am. And when they do, they won’t much care for the discovery.’ He rammed the pistol butt into the man’s nose, his head crashing back in a fountain of blood.
‘It’s not people such as this you have to fight,’ said the gask.
‘One battle at a time. Until the day is ours.’
‘Quickly, now,’ urged Khow, pointing towards a frisson of activity centred on the customs house. Officers sprinted out of the warehouse doors, arrowing in on the sound of the triplanes’ roaring engines, angry armed men shoving their way through a queue of wagons lined up for checks. ‘Our paths are narrowing.’
Narrowing like the end of a noose. ‘To the Night’s Pride, then. For better or worse.’
Jacob and the others followed the pilot inside the triplane, a windowless cargo chamber filled with wooden crates, all of them stamped with the Landsman Weapon Works’ legend. She climbed a ladder and disappeared behind a simple curtain sealing off the cockpit. Outside, the engines built up to a throaty crescendo as the triplane’s nose doors began to swing down, sealing off their view of the salt flats. Benches had been built into either side of the fuselage, just enough room to sit down and hold on to the freight’s netting as the aircraft turned, jouncing along the flats, its bouncing speeding up with the clamour of its engines. Then the stout transport angled up into the air, accompanied by the crack of gunshots from the ground. Fuselage splintered towards the rear of the plane as one of the bullets broke through and found a home inside the freight, and then they were spiralling and twisting upward. Jacob felt the clutch of gravity lessening as they climbed towards the Night’s Pride.
‘I think we have worn out our welcome in Weyland,’ said Sheplar. ‘That was a strange experience for one who is used to being the hunter, rather than the hunted.’
Jacob clutched the webbing as the triplane spiralled ever higher. I wish I could say it was a novelty for me. If just leaving home alive is this hard, how difficult will it be to find Carter out there?
Carter shoved back the brute of a man he faced. He spotted another slave trying to slip behind Duncan and brain the man. How long before we have to abandon the anchor point? The Weylanders hardly needed green armbands to distinguish them from their attackers. The rival mining force had similar features to Rodalians, their curses so mangled they hardly registered as words at all. Whatever land had been raided to take these hostiles for slaves, that country hadn’t short-changed its sons on ferociousness. Enemy sky miners dropped off the transports in seemingly endless waves, screaming unintelligible war cries at the Weylanders, their aggression cold enough to turn a man’s blood to stone. Would it have made a difference to Carter if his enemies had hailed from one of the league’s neighbours, a fellow member nation of the Lanca? Probably not. Carter stepped in and shoulder-slammed Duncan’s attacker, knocking him sprawling over a boulder. Unlike the station’s exterior, the battleground on this new rock was anything but smooth-surfaced. Cracks and pits and miniature valleys a man could tumble into, falls that would kill you as sure as an opponent’s club finding its mark. Carter saw Duncan trade blows with the man facing him, blocking the pickaxe handle, turning it and bringing the club down on the attacker’s knee. A crack of heavy wood sounded as Carter fended off a pickaxe handle, then he ducked on instinct as an enemy transporter buzzed down, nearly giving him a haircut with its humming rotors. Two of the rival house’s slaves pushed forward with an anchor cable lowered from their craft, waiting for the defenders to be distracted enough for them to rush in unopposed and trade lines. A group of Weylanders guarded the anchor point, yelling muffled abuse through their masks and waving their clubs menacingly towards the invaders, bravado and fear fuelling their challenges in equal measure. This brawl had degenerated into a mad, deadly game of tug-of-war; the war part of the game given extra emphasis by the violence. Their rock was still heading towards the princess’s territory, its motion not yet arrested by enemy transporters trying to drag the stake towards their own slice of sky. Owen’s words proved prophetic. It wasn’t difficult to hate this rival slave force when they were landing blows on you, Carter’s bruised and bloodied body pitted against the yelling banshees. Not in the slightest. Two invaders jumped Carter simultaneously, one of them slipping an arm around his neck while the other ripped off his mask. Trying to suck in the almost non-existent air at this altitude, Carter half-fell as he was brought to his knees by the two assailants’ weight. Another slave with a pickaxe handle rushed forward to cave in Carter’s skull, but Duncan appeared from nowhere to clash sticks with the screaming slave. Undaunted, the two holding Carter dragged him on his knees towards a chasm… a gap in the rock that ran all the way to the open sky. He couldn’t breathe, let alone fight them off. It was as though he inhaled fire, his lungs burning every time he gasped vapour and smoke. Carter’s chest heaved as his body convulsed, hopelessly gasping the thin air. With a last, desperate burst of strength, Carter kicked his way to his feet, grabbed the man trying to hold him down and lunged forward, using the momentum to flip the fighter over his head and into the chasm. The remaining slave grappled with Carter, working hard to send the Weylander after his comrade. Then he hesitated a second as a siren began to drone from the rear of one of the transporters, the slave’s head urgently glancing from left to right. Carter kicked out at the man, but it was too late, the hoary little slave had discontinued the wrestling match and was running full pelt towards a landing transporter. Carter pulled back from the rim and staggered towards the boulder where his mask lay abandoned, still pumping out little spurts of air. He shoved it against his mouth, sucking greedily for a full minute before he had the wherewithal to slip the straps around his head. All around the rock, enemy transporters ditched their cables and pulled away.
The attacking force ran almost comically in the weak gravity towards their craft, although there was nothing funny about the cruel way they were pursued by the defenders, smashed down from the rear and bludgeoned to death by the princess’s vengeful sky miners. At the opposite end of the rock hovered the reason for their desperation. Princess Helrena’s ship floated in a cloud of engine smoke, loitering on the margins of her licensed territory, a brooding steel gigantean with all her gunports and turrets swivelled and ready to open up in defence of the prize her labour force had hauled home. A second after the ugly rock nosed across into home territory, Carter heard a drone in the air as a large squadron of transports broke through the clouds. More of the attackers or allies of the same – for no sooner had they appeared and spotted the princess’s ship ahead, they wheeled away, climbing for height and twisting and turning back into the clouds. We were that close to dying. If they had landed a second wave, we’d have been beaten into a pulp. Carter was
overwhelmed by competing emotions. Sickness at the carnage and death… elation at surviving. Shame, too. The guns on the princess’s ship let loose a broadside, gobs of flame arrowing towards three transporters too slow to depart. The craft were trespassing inside her territory now, and they were going to pay the price. All three invaders exploded into oily black flowers, not enough debris left to tell transporter wreckage from burning flesh as their remains expanded into the sky. A cheering sounded from the Weylanders on the strike. As Carter turned around, he saw Duncan walking forward, the heir of the Landor acres dragging his bloodied wooden club like a gamekeeper having dispatched a downed flight of partridges.
‘You not raising a huzzah?’ asked Duncan.
Carter lifted the mask a second to touch the red weal of the whiplash he’d received. ‘Hell no. Maybe the Vandians will cheer us. Maybe that princess will come out and kiss me when she sees the strike we’ve brought home for her.’
‘Maybe she’ll kiss my arse, first.’
They walked back to Owen and Kerge, crouched by the intact survey equipment and their bodies untouched by the bloody battle across the rock.
‘Feels like your stake, now, don’t it, Mister Carnehan?’ said Owen. ‘Just remind yourself that it’s only ever theirs.’ He nodded towards the long silvery warship hovering on a spear of fire.
Guess my arse isn’t going to get kissed, either.
Carter was sitting on the edge of his bunk in the dormitory, his arms extended for Adella to remove the old bandage around his ribs, his body cracked and smarting from the battle to seize the sky mines’ new claim.
‘I was so worried about you,’ said Adella.
‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ said Carter. Even as Carter mouthed the words, he knew they must sound like a lie. There were a lot of promises a slave could make that couldn’t be kept. And that had to be the greatest of them all.
‘I don’t think I could go on living if you died,’ said Adella. ‘What would be the point?’