The Incorruptibles

by John Hornor Jacobs

  ‘That’s …’ I shook my head. There was just no talking to this boy. ‘That’s right. But the vaettir’re something else entirely.’

  He snorted. ‘Tell him. I ain’t gonna be talked down to.’

  I nodded. ‘All right, Mr Bantam. I’ll tell him what I saw.’

  I took time to set a couple snares on the smooth, grooved entrance of a game trail dipping over the lip of an old creekbed. I’d ride back through in the morning, early, to collect whatever I’d snared. We’d gone through the tongue and livers and could use some more meat. Rabbit, I hoped. Or maybe something fatter. Coon ain’t half bad, if you know how to clean it right, which I do. I ain’t much for bragging, but there it is: I know how to clean coon.

  Banty had a hard, angry slope to his shoulders, and he settled into his saddle like a tick digging into the soft white flesh of nether regions.

  Nothing good would come of that one.

  The damnedest thing is, everyone is born into this world on the edge of a knife. From the time you’re wet and squalling – the slightest tip of the balance and you go sliding away, consumed by remorse, or guilt. Or revenge. Or even love. Only Ia knows how it will turn out, and he’s not telling.

  Faith is just believing he cares.

  Livia was sitting by the fire with Fisk when I returned. Cimbri and a single lascar, too, sat on the logs next to it. Fisk had a pot of coffee stinking over the flames – he always burned it – and looked uncomfortable in the lady’s presence. He kept tugging the hem of his Imperial blues, trying to straighten his jacket. Cimbri looked pained, as though he thought she should be back on the boat. His whiskers seemed to bristle with impatience.

  ‘You’ve been requested at the palace,’ Cimbri said, jerking a thumb at the Cornelian. ‘Seems the Senator wants a dinner party.’

  ‘Ain’t that a little premature?’

  ‘You obviously don’t know the Senator. He wants what he wants.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ He shifted, and then sighed. ‘Seems he’s quite taken with young Mr Bantam.’

  ‘Banty?’ I couldn’t help myself. It just popped right out there, like the words had a life of their own.

  ‘I know. Damned foolish …’ He coughed and looked at Livia. ‘Sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean no disrespect.’

  ‘None taken.’

  He coughed again and said, ‘Mr Cornelius seems to remember Banty “saving” him. Or at least being instrumental in his … er … his rescue and medical treatment.’

  I laughed. Ia-damn that boy. He was gonna get into serious trouble one of these days. Between the patrician and Fisk, Banty’s days were numbered. Some folks just can’t help themselves.

  Fire calls to fire, they say. I believe it.

  Cimbri pulled a machine-rolled Medieran cheroot from his brushed vest, and popped it into his mouth through his copious whiskers.

  ‘Er. Yes. And he’ll be seated as the guest of honour.’

  Fisk spat, and I laughed even harder. I raised an eyebrow at Livia. ‘How’s your father? His leg?’

  ‘Remarkably well, all things considered. He’d gone through quite a bit of liquor until one of the slaves found some poppy extract and we drugged his brandy. He slept for ten hours. And then was bellowing for red meat, eggs, and more spirits. Raw, preferably.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘All of them. Raw.’

  Fisk whistled.

  ‘Mr Cornelius must have the constitution of a bear,’ I said.

  ‘It’s Ia-damned impressive, the man’s will. He’s a monster, he is. The wound hasn’t even slowed him down.’ Cimbri stood up. ‘We’re gonna need more meat. And since Miss Livia asked if she could see a shoal auroch … I thought since you’re acquainted … she, and her sister, and Isabelle, the Medieran lass, might …’

  ‘You think that’s wise, Cimbri? Miss Livia? A hunt? With the ladies?’ Fisk squinted at Livia as though trying to see what she was thinking. She blinked slowly, deliberately, and stared back. A steady, cool gaze – fearless.

  ‘Your concern is?’ she said, after a while.

  ‘The womenfolk. I’m sure you know how to comport yourself, but those other ladies …’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll be frank.’

  ‘Please. It is what I wish from you.’

  ‘Those ladies are too damned foolish for a hunt. One of ’em will ride away and a vaettir will have her stripped way beyond her knickers before we know she’s even gone missing.’

  ‘We have faith in your abilities, Mr Fisk.’ She smiled and placed a fine hand upon his rough, tanned one. It was like I could see, right there, his brains getting scrambled.

  ‘Going out there, on the plains? Your father lost his leg. Just three days ago, a stretcher put an arrow through my leg. And there’s what happened to Orrin to think about.’

  ‘True. But we would have Secundus … and Gnaeus … and as many legionaries and lascars as you deem fit, Mr Fisk, each one bearing holly and silver.’ She inclined her beautiful head to me. ‘And you, Mr Ilys.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t carry much of either, but I wouldn’t miss this folderol for a sack of gold.’

  Livia patted Fisk’s hand and smiled. ‘So, that’s settled. Tomorrow morning? We’ll assemble here?’

  ‘Looks like.’ Fisk glanced at Cimbri. ‘Have the lascars unlimber the Ia-damned wagon and port it over. We’re gonna need it.’

  ‘For the auroch?’

  ‘Or the corpses.’

  No one laughed.

  And so it was I rode east again that day, until I found signs of shoal auroch. I stripped myself of all weapons and even unsaddled Bess, riding her bridleless and with only a blanket, trusting to her good sense and the balance and ability Ia had given me.

  There was a moment, when the sun, grown long in the sky, passed behind a grey cloud and the world went dim. In that moment I knew I wasn’t alone out on the great sea of the plains. I felt a diminishment. I was a flea, a spark, an infinitesimal mote on the face of the earth, but I was not alone.

  My mother would have said it was the old gods, the numen. I had half an inclination that it was a mite taller and toothier than them.

  And then the cloud passed, and I scanned the horizon for indigene stretcher and shoal beast alike.

  I didn’t find either. I was considerably relieved, I must admit – if I’m to go to my maker without a liar’s stain on my soul.

  I looked at the mule, and she shivered her shoulder muscles and stamped the ground.

  I wasn’t going to work myself into an Ia-damned tizzy if she wasn’t.

  ‘I’ll be skinned if you don’t have better sense than I do myself.’

  Bess chucked her head, turned her neck to look at me, and bared her pink and black gums.

  ‘I know, girl. Ia help me, I know.’

  Seeing that I agreed, she turned back to the plains, the mountains at our back, and walked on.

  TEN

  We gathered by the river in the half-light of dawn, the legionaries huddled in thick woollen paenulae with the hoods drawn over their heads, the cloaks’ lead-weighted hems stirring in the wind. They clutched stock carbines in nervous fingers and the wind whipping down off the mountains sent their plumed breath skirling into the early morning mists. The lictors – always prouder than the soldiers, made haughty by their vaunted position closer to the patrician class and their religious ordination – held their fasces high, showing the silver axes bound with holly fronds. One carried a carmine brag-rag mounted on a pole, legion-style.

  They’d brought over the wagon in the night, loading it and a couple of draft horses onto a raft made from planks and cleverly inflated auroch bladders and manoeuvred her in the dark across the Big Rill with paddles and poles. I harnessed the horses to the wagon and told the soldiers to climb aboard. The quartet of lictors could ride, and I indicated for them to f
ind mounts. We had enough to spare.

  ‘First sign of trouble,’ Fisk said to the legionaries as a group, ‘you boys bail out of that wagon.’

  Half of them blinked and stared stupidly, not understanding.

  Fisk snapped his fingers, a bright, hard sound even with the wind.

  ‘Understood? We see one sign of stretchers, you hit the ground and flip this wagon on its side. Got me?’

  There was a muttered assent and nodding of heads. Fisk looked at me and then the soldiers in the wagon, indicating they were my charge now.

  Gnaeus sat on his charger, carbine in hand, chatting with the ladies of the Cornelian. Hard to tell if he was already drunk or if he’d just stayed that way all night.

  ‘You’ll see, Isabelle. You’ll witness these brute animals. They’re great stupid woolly creatures, and they stay grouped together even when they’re being slaughtered.’ He waved clumsily at the dark plains.

  The fine-featured Medieran girl listened to Gnaeus, nodding. She had a long neck and a fine figure, and sat the horse well, decked in suede riding leathers, nicely cut, and a dainty riding cabassette perched atop her beautiful, dark curls.

  She was certainly easy on the eyes.

  ‘Brutish beasts that match the brutish inhabitants of these colonies.’ Gnaeus turned slowly and looked at Fisk. ‘These protectorates are filled with the most base and aberrant of all men, Isabelle. Remember that! Always keep this in mind. They’ll have at you in a trice if you give them an opportunity.’

  ‘Have at me?’ She smiled and hid a giggle behind a gloved hand.

  ‘They’re scurrilous, randy dogs. They’ll hump their own mothers given half the chance.’

  I’ve spent the last ten years with Fisk. Seen him called everything. He’s like stone, he is. But I could see in the set of his jaw, the cant of his shoulders, the muscle popping in his cheek, that he was exercising vast restraint.

  Any other man. Any other …

  Fisk is my partner, but I have no illusions on the destination of his immortal soul. He’s damned as surely as the sun rises, as sure as the grass continues to grow. He loves the Hellfire. He loves his gun. He’s a hard, unyielding man, with a long memory and impervious to regret. But there’s kindness there, too, under all that. There’s love and remorse. He’s destined for perdition’s flames, but there’s good in him too. I believe that, otherwise I wouldn’t have ridden with him these past long years. At least that’s my view.

  Banty moved his horse closer to the Medieran lass. The beasts chuffed their heads and champed in the dust. Isabelle greeted Banty, with a dazzling smile that suffused her face with a radiance to match the rising sun.

  And looking at Banty now, I thought how little difference there was between him and Fisk except for the years and experience of hardship. Banty could almost have been his son, his younger brother.

  He’d be as hard, too, recalcitrant and cold. If he lived that long.

  The legionaries in the wagon had donned thick Tueton tunics – some more than one – and dyed leather britches. Some had focales twisted around their necks to preserve them from the cold mountain wind; others had their sagum wrapped tight around their bodies. From their belts hung longknives and pistols and utility aprons – no longer wearing lappets, instead, stained cloth hung from the belt in front – useful for wiping hands and cleaning blades during long marches or bloodwork. Only Banty bestride his horse was decked out in full Ruman uniform, although his Imperial blue jacket was devoid of phalerae. Even his boots were gleaming – he sure had dudded himself up.

  Gnaeus noticed Isabelle’s smile and kneed his great charger forward, between Banty and the girl.

  Banty, showing some sense for once, tipped his hat and moved his horse away.

  Gnaeus beamed. He pulled a silver flask from a pocket and drank, his carbine held loosely in hand.

  Livia sat mounted beside Isabelle on a grey gelding, sensibly dressed in a thick furred vest with high collar, burnished grey riding skirt, and a fine pistol at her waist. Her sister, Carnelia, was similarly arrayed – and yawning.

  Fisk drew near Gnaeus and Secundus. He held himself tight, his shoulders high and his reinless hand free but ready, near his six-guns. His hat was pulled down low on his brow, so that it was hard to see his eyes and, I imagine, whatever emotions lived there. Fisk was doing a job he really didn’t want to do, but damned if he wasn’t going to do it to the best of his ability.

  ‘Mr Gnaeus, Shoestring sighted the auroch about two hours ride from here. Should still be in that area. But we need to get moving. And there’s a stream to ford.’

  Gnaeus, hearing Fisk, scowled, his face twisting in disgust as though, unbuttoning to piss, he’d discovered a leech in his britches. His expressions warred between sourness at Fisk’s presence and excitement of the hunt – not that it was going to be much of one, unless you counted what was most likely hunting us. Auroch are big, stupid creatures; Mr Gnaeus was right on that count. It’s a wonder they’ve lasted as long as they have.

  I kicked Bess into a trot, and headed east. A lictor lost control of his mount; it wheeled and reared, and he hit the ground in a cloud of dust. Gnaeus snarled, ‘You. Get on the wagon with the legionaries.’

  Blushing a deep crimson, the man dusted himself off and climbed among the men in the wagon.

  I’ve been at the head, rear, and middle of a string of horses in my time, and they make a terrible ruckus. But once you get going, all those horses moving together, the wagon creaking, it’s a feeling like no other. All this life, Ia-given life, moving together with a single purpose. Damn shame, sometimes, when all that life comes together to take life. I’d hate to be a part of an army on the hoof, carrying damnation with them. I figure it would feel wonderful and terrible all at once.

  Just as the sun crested the horizon, sending pink and purple streamers into the sky, Fisk rode over and matched Bess’s pace.

  ‘You think that Gnaeus will get up to his antics?’

  ‘If he doesn’t, Banty will.’

  He spat. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Mr Bantam showed me some of his shooting yesterday on the plains.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘He bagged some quail.’ I kept an eye on the horizon as we talked. ‘He drew faster than shit through a goose. Missed his first shot, though.’

  Fisk looked at me close, checking I wasn’t pulling his leg. Then he nodded. ‘Think he’ll cause trouble?’

  ‘Well, the boy’s aggrieved, that’s for damn sure. You snipped his prick a few notches when you backhanded him. He ain’t gonna forget that anytime soon.’

  ‘And Gnaeus. Damnation.’

  I waited, letting that last bit hang. ‘Hell, Fisk. We’ve been in far worse spots than this.’

  He looked at Miss Livia, and then away, quick-like. ‘Yeah. I reckon so.’

  ‘Maybe there are some complications.’ The woman. The vaettir. The Cornelians. ‘Not much we can do other than cut and run. That what you want to do?’ I already knew the answer.

  He glared at me. ‘You can be cruel, Shoe, when you have a mind. But I’ve always known that about you.’

  ‘Not cruel. Just trying to get you to buck up, pard.’

  He spat again. ‘That right?’

  I grinned. ‘That’s right.’

  Secundus reined in, dropping back to us. ‘Everything all right?’

  Fisk nodded. ‘Gonna ride our backtrail for a bit. Shoe, you watch the women and wagon.’ He turned his horse. ‘Mr Secundus, I’d be much obliged to you if you would …’ The black turned again underneath him, ready for movement. ‘If you’d do your best to restrain your brother. At least during the hunt.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  Fisk paused for a moment, his gaze flicking toward the women, and I could have swore he was about to say, ‘And look after Miss Livia,’ but he shut his mouth and rode w
est, back toward the mountains.

  ‘He’s a strange man, that Mr Fisk.’ Secundus’ words suggested puzzlement, rather than condemnation.

  ‘I once knew a man who had one of those intestinal eels from far Tchinee. Rode with him for a year. Been a lascar in his youth and fallen overboard in eel-infested waters. Didn’t look like nothing was wrong with him, either, having that eel living in his belly. At night, after the fire had died down and he started to snoring, that eel would get curious, stick its head out of the man’s mouth, and chitter at whoever noticed it.’

  Secundus said, ‘You’re joking, surely.’

  I smiled. ‘Not about this. Saw it myself.’

  ‘What happened to the man?’

  ‘We were outriding the far reaches of the Big Empty. All our meat was gone, we’d been living on hardtack for a month, and it was bitter cold. Foot of snow. So we stoked the fire high, gave Jimbo an extra ration of whiskey, and waited for him to sleep.’

  ‘And …’

  ‘Eel peeks its head out around midnight. Starts a’chittering away. We grab it, pull it out. It’s screaming at us like an infant, but vicious and hateful.’ I shook my head. ‘I’ll swear on my mother’s life it was cursing us.’

  ‘I find this hard to believe, Mr Ilys.’

  ‘Believe what you will. There’s strange like Mr Fisk. And then there’s strange.’

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘Jimson died before daybreak. We cut up the eel and cooked it. Tasted just like you’d think. Like bile and shit.’

  ‘That’s vile.’

  ‘Yep.’ I scanned the horizon again, and then looked back along the length of the hunting party. ‘Moral of the story? Don’t go swimming in far Tchinee.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  ‘Could you do me a great service, Mr Secundus?’

  ‘What do you need? I will help if I can.’

  ‘Rejoin your brother and sisters. Keep that Hellfire at the ready. Don’t drink any of your brother’s whiskey. And watch the plains.’

  ‘You’re worried about the possibility of indigenes?’