The Incorruptibles

by John Hornor Jacobs

  ‘No, you’re struck.’

  ‘You see that other one?’ Fisk tried to push me away. ‘Carrying something. Maybe a settler. Ia dammit, he took a settler.’

  ‘Nothing you can do about it. Here.’ I grabbed his arm and laid him down. He still clutched the carbine. No telling how many bullets were left or how much damage he’d done his immortal soul.

  There wasn’t much blood coming from his leg, so it didn’t look as if he was going to expire from blood loss.

  ‘We gotta get back to the Cornelian. We’ll get this out.’

  He groaned, pushed himself up off the ground and hobbled west, toward the White Mountains and our horses.

  He stopped and turned to me. ‘Don’t let all this auroch meat go to waste, Shoestring.’

  Opening my oiled satchel and withdrawing my longknife, I went to the nearest auroch, still warm to the touch. I took its tongue and liver and, moving to the next animal did the same. I harvested the carcasses until my satchel was full of meat, bloody, still warm.

  Then I jogged to catch up with Fisk, the eyes and breath of the plains upon me.

  THREE

  Banty was wet and miserable by the time we returned to the Cornelian and the gurgling waters of the Big Rill.

  The leaden clouds had opened up, the sun slipped behind the mountains, and the land was dark and rainswept.

  Banty’d managed to start a fire and set up a lean-to in the lee of a bank break. The ponies, still tethered together, stood stamping and steaming on the sand. A johnboat lay on the shore, while a legionary and two lascars moved among the ponies with a feedbag.

  We came into the firelight and Cimbri, the legion prefect, raised his whiskered head. He wore his oiled greatcloak and uniform. His phalerae from old campaigns, those brass and golden gilt plates indicating his rank and accomplishments, peeked from the open flaps of his coat – small, but conspicuous, and absolutely necessary to enforce his command, given his low birth. Cimbri’s wide-brimmed hat bore the crossed spears – two pila – of the classic Ruman legionary of old, before Hellfire and artillery had been introduced. A bragging stick was jammed into his belt alongside his six-guns and longknife. Cimbri looked as irritated as Banty looked miserable.

  ‘There you are, dwarf. Where’s the pistolero?’

  By then I was leading Fisk’s black, who kept tugging at the reins and pulling away until I had to hobble her front legs. Fisk was awake, but he’d gone into some kind of muttering dream while his leg oozed blood. I keep a flask of cacique on my person for medicinal purposes – solely medicinal, on my honour. He had drained it the moment I’d handed it to him.

  Cimbri noticed Fisk, slumped on the black, and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Trouble?’

  I hopped off Bess, and moved to help Fisk down. Cimbri stood up, kicked at Banty, and said, ‘Fool. Go help.’

  We got Fisk under the lean-to and I retrieved the whiskey from the packhorse that carried what Bess wouldn’t. Fisk was delirious, almost insensible, but not quite far enough gone not to take a swallow. A man’s got to be pretty far gone not to swallow when whiskey is at hand.

  I gathered up my barber’s bag, scissors and clean linens, pliers and hacksaws, and spread out them out on a scrap of clean canvas. I split Fisk’s britches from cuff to crotch and pulled the flaps out of the way. There was blood, but not too much of it, and it was doubtful he’d lose the leg. For a man doomed to perdition’s flames, he had been granted luck by Ia, that’s for damned sure.

  A good amount of whiskey went into Fisk, and Cimbri and I both took long pulls from the bottle before I drenched his wound in liquor and pulled free the arrow shaft. He didn’t yelp or make a sound, but his eyes were open, looking straight into my face. It wasn’t an empty stare, but it wasn’t altogether with us, either. His body jumped some when the shaft cleared flesh. I followed the removal with another dousing of liquor, and wrapped his thigh in clean linens.

  ‘Those’ll have to be changed in the morning,’ Cimbri said. ‘You want to bring him to the Cornelian? We can have Miss Livia look after him. She’s schooled in bloodwork.’

  ‘Let’s just let him settle here before we get a highborn woman involved. Leave us a lascar and Banty.’

  Cimbri nodded. ‘I’ll send back the lascar. Report?’

  ‘Stretchers.’

  ‘I figured that.’

  ‘Murdered a group of settlers just about an hour distant. Took one of them to Ia knows where.’

  Cimbri glanced at Banty. ‘Take care of their mounts. Groom them, then half nosebags, each.’

  Banty scowled, stood up, saluted. ‘Sir, yes, sir.’

  He waited until Banty had reached the horses before saying, ‘That boy is a nuisance, and I’m sorry I saddled you with him. But he’s the youngest son of a rich equite out of Harbor Town. It’s my job to keep him out of trouble, and alive.’

  ‘Might want to keep him on the boat, then, rather than riding scout in stretcher territory.’

  ‘Hell, if he stayed on the boat, one of my legionaries would split him wide open in a matter of days.’ He laughed and tilted his head toward the whiskey bottle. ‘And the only thing he knows how to do is ride. And sulk.’

  I gave him the bottle and dug around in Fisk’s vest pockets until I located the tin of Medieran cigarettes. Cimbri and I shared them sitting by the fire.

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘What? The vaettir?’

  ‘They left a dead boy alone, but they took a man’s liver and tongue, and the backstraps of another settler.’

  ‘Ia be. That’s some gruesome shit. Why?’

  ‘Can’t be ’cause they give two damns about the shoal aurochs, I know that much. I’ve seen where they slaughtered thousands of the beasts, back when we were pushing west out of Fort Brust, nigh on a century past.’

  Cimbri raised his eyebrows at that and looked me over. He knew my dvergar blood, but it was rare we talked about the differences between us.

  He considered me for a while, smoking his cigarette. ‘So, why now?’

  ‘No idea. Fisk might know – he’s so damned wrapped up with them. Think they killed his family. Whatever the case, they’re getting more active. On the warpath.’

  There was a groan. A cough. ‘Bullshit.’

  We looked back at Fisk, who was struggling upright. I clasped his hand and pulled him up.

  He grabbed the whiskey, took a long pull, and then patted his vest.

  ‘Ia-dammit, Shoestring. Gimme my smokes.’

  I handed them over. He took out one and tamped down the loose tobacco on his wrist, very slow and deliberate, like he was drawing out his audience. Or it might have been that I’d dumped half a bottle of whiskey into him. And the cacique.

  ‘Was a message.’

  Cimbri snorted. ‘They smart enough to deliver messages?’

  Fisk nodded. ‘Hell, yeah, they are. Smart as you. Or me.’

  ‘That ain’t saying much,’ Cimbri replied.

  Banty joined in. ‘I hear tell they’ve got a vaettir whore at Pauline’s in New Damnation.’ We hadn’t seen him come back, and now the pup’s voice was loud and eager. ‘Heard she’s got the sweetest pussy known to man, but they gotta keep her bound.’

  Cimbri snorted. But he didn’t send the boy away.

  Fisk lit his smoke from the fire and drank more whiskey. I hated it when the man went dissolute, but I imagine his leg hurt something fierce. ‘Just what I heard,’ Banty said. ‘Cornelius himself was smitten with her.’

  Cimbri raised a hand as if to cuff him. Then stopped and lowered his hand. ‘Mr Bantam.’ His whiskers quivered with outrage. ‘You don’t talk about our charge in that manner.’

  Banty ducked his head and covered his ears.

  I felt a tad sorry for the boy, so ungainly and over-eager. A damned deadly pup with a Hellfire pistol. I said, ‘I
heard the same thing too, but that’s just camp talk. If there was someone they were touting as stretcher pussy, must’ve been a tall whore they tricked out to look vaettir, but she weren’t no vaettir.’

  ‘How could you know that?’

  ‘Don’t argue with him, boy, green as you are,’ Cimbri said.

  ‘Just want to know how he could know that.’

  Fisk shifted and stirred the fire with a branch, his leg sticking out at an angle. ‘Ain’t no vaettir woman gonna allow herself to be touched, not to mention fucked, by some Ruman. Highborn or not.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Look around you, pup.’ He took a long pull on the whiskey, then shoved it at the boy and waited until he’d taken a swallow. ‘This is a big land. But it ain’t big enough for man and stretcher to live side by side and never conflict.’ He spat. ‘They don’t age, the stretchers. They don’t change. They’re proud. They’ll skin you alive. They’ll fuck their own sister, or mother, or brother. They ain’t got no laws nor decency, as far as I can tell. When you’re never gonna die except through violence, why worry about salvation or morality or whatnot? Huh? They’d spill your blood for pleasure, and slaughter your Ia-damned children …’ He stopped there, swallowed, and, passing a hand over his eyes, shook his head. I didn’t have to guess what he was thinking.

  I stood up, went to my saddlebags, and took the satchel of meat I’d sliced from the aurochs. I returned to the fire, opened the scorched piece of leather – my outrider’s kitchen – and began prepping the livers and tongues for roasting. I had some salt I’d won in a card game, a small onion. Sweetgrass and winterfat grew thick in these parts, too. I crushed the sweetgrass, sliced the onion, and then flayed open two livers and stuffed them with the spice and herbs.

  Finally, Fisk said, ‘No. No vaettir woman would ever let you stick your cock in her and make a half-breed. She’d kill you first.’

  ‘She might try.’ Banty chuckled.

  ‘She would. Stretcher women are as fearsome as the men. More, if you count their terrible beauty. You’ve never seen how they move. It’s like light, or daemonfire. Wouldn’t be no trying.’

  Banty closed his mouth then.

  I had the livers on spits and crackling in the fire. Cimbri stood up.

  ‘You said it was a message.’

  Fisk nodded, his face seemingly devoid of pain or drunkenness as he stared into the flames.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Pretty simple, really.’ He took a last drag of his smoke and flicked it away, making a little red falling star which cut through the night. A lascar near the johnboats raised his head at the tracer, his breath pluming in the air. ‘You harvest these aurochs, we’ll harvest you. Not because they give a shit about the animals. But because they like games. They’re bored. And tormenting is their favourite sport.’

  Cimbri blinked, then stood there for a while, thinking. Finally, he snapped his fingers, and a lascar went to the johnboat to prepare for the ride back to the Cornelian.

  ‘Might need you to talk to Cornelius. He’s quite leathered right now and who knows what mischief he’s up to. They spotted a mama bear on the western shore this afternoon and now he’s a tad excited about his hunt tomorrow. Rest and we’ll send a relief in the morning. Sharbo and Horehound, most like.’

  He strode to the boat, hopped in, and the lascar shoved them into the waters of the Big Rill. The rain beaded and pattered on the sailors’ oiled jackets, down their cowls. In the distance, lanterns lit the galleries of the Cornelian. Around us, the air had begun to mist and close in tight, but we could hear the sounds of revelry and the clatter and crash of bottles, the high-pitched laughter of women. And below it, the banked thrum of daemon-fired engines idling, pushing heated water through its innards.

  Fisk hocked and spat into the fire. ‘Get me my bedroll, Shoe. There’s a saint.’

  FOUR

  In the morning we took a johnboat over to the Cornelian. It was a marvel, the steamer, frilled with intricate woodwork railings and littered with little fleur de lis and smiling daemon masks, festooned with copper piping and valves that intermittently erupted steam, and covered with doohickeys whose function I couldn’t guess. From the lower deck Cimbri waved to us with his bragging stick and motioned to a soldier, who pulled a lever on a cluster of pipes near the outer rail – causing a mechanical ladder to extend from the boat and allowing us to come abeam and climb aboard.

  Fisk disembarked the johnboat stiffly, and had some trouble mounting the clever mechanical ladder even with the lascar’s help. He hadn’t let me change his dressing before coming over. Only let me roughly sew his trouser leg shut so as not to offend the patricians with the sight of his manhood. Though they might have enjoyed it. Who knows what pleases the patricians?

  Maybe forty legionaries were billeted on the bottom deck barracks. Soldiers aren’t truly happy unless they’re fighting or whoring, and the Cornelian didn’t look like it offered much of either. So, to fill their time, maintenance. Many of them lolled near the railing, sharpening longknives and polishing their tall caligae, lovingly restaining the ornate greaves embossed into the leather, another remnant from the legions of old. They watched us with appraising eyes, thumbs crooked in their weapon-filled balteuses at their waists. Some grinned in the morning light as we climbed unsteadily onto the burnished wooden deck. But they were all close shaven, and their gear was well maintained.

  ‘Morning, gents.’ Cimbri looked Fisk up and down. ‘You look like hammered shit.’

  Fisk had self-medicated until deep in the night, Ia help him. I smiled.

  ‘Fresh as daisies, prefect,’ I said. ‘Daisies blooming in the morning light.’

  ‘More like black-eyed Susans.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘But at least you’re not still drunk. As it stands now, you’ll be a match for the boss.’

  He led us around the lower deck to the stairway, and up to a middle deck that smelled of incense and perfume and sulphur, to a dark tight hall of stained mahogany with golden filigree and scrollwork. Hard to get an idea of the theme, but it looked like forestry with mystical animals and distant mountains. Old country images that seemed exotic and foreign to someone like me, who had never left the colonies. Furthest I’ve travelled east was Mariopolis, though I did ride down into the hot lands to the south once, when I was just coming into manhood, to look for gold. Only found dissolution and got my heart broke. But that’s a tale for another time.

  In the hallway, we could hear the muffled sounds of women talking and the buzz of what sounded like large insects filtering through the air. Fisk stopped his limping walk and looked at a door.

  I followed his gaze. A finely wrought silver sunburst of wardwork radiated outward from a knob in the centre of the door. My skin prickled at the sight of the silver, and the hairs stood at the back of my neck.

  Cimbri glanced around, noticed our lack of forward movement, and clomped back down the tight hallway.

  Fisk glanced at the opposite door. It, too, was laced in wardwork, but not as extensively as its neighbour.

  ‘Ah. Yes.’ Cimbri clicked his teeth. ‘The engineer’s chambers. Heavily protected.’

  Reaching out, Fisk touched the knob.

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘Doesn’t need protection from your kind, Fisk.’

  We moved on, out of the silver-webbed hall. I had begun to feel tight and a little itchy in the close confines of the passage. Silver does that to me.

  Seen from the bank, the boat looked small, almost toylike, in the wide blue of the Big Rill. But now we were aboard and I couldn’t help but be impressed by how large it was. The staterooms alone were, if not large, then spacious, and if the craftsmanship of the boat was any indication, well appointed.

  At the end of the hall was a spiral wooden staircase, which we took, and we found ourselves on the topmost level of the Cornelian, above t
he hurricane deck. Higher still stood the main stack, and a pilot’s roost, but on this deck was a gazebo, woven of wicker and bound with what looked like copper hasps and heavy ropes. Under it was a table with a large canvas umbrella rippling with the wind.

  Three men and two women lounged on couches around this table, which was laden with foodstuff. The womenfolk had shawls wrapped around their shoulders, even though the sun was bright – a cold wind came down from the White Mountains. In an upright wicker chair, another woman sat with a book in her hand. She was long-necked, high-breasted. And beautiful.

  ‘Ah, Cimbri! Are you ready for the hunt?’ one of the men asked.

  Cimbri grunted an acknowledgement, and the oldest man sat up on his couch and peered at us with bleary eyes. He was heavily whiskered and dressed in a linen outfit, rumpled and breezy, and he wore a pistol even when dining with what I could only assume was his family. He held a glass of wine.

  ‘These the outriders, then?’ He gestured with the glass, not spilling a drop.

  Cimbri glanced at us and tossed his head at the older man, indicating we should step forward.

  ‘Mr Fisk, Shoestring – this here’s Mr Cornelius. And his family.’

  Fisk took a step forward and inclined his head.

  ‘So, Cimbri tells me you have information for us.’

  Slowly, Fisk described the events at the auroch slaughter, no embellishment or flourishes. Just the facts – we rode west; we found dead things; spotted indigenes; fired upon them.

  I watched the Cornelian children. The two men – the Senator’s sons, I imagine – were sturdy and heavily muscled. As Fisk spoke of firing shots at the stretchers, one of the sons smirked and glanced at his brother before drawling, ‘What did they look like, these indigenes?’

  Fisk turned his gaze to the man. ‘You ain’t seen drawings of them in the papers? They’re tall and deadly.’